Aitch Are Gives You...
Remember swine flu? I worked in a large office in Slough when the outbreak hit the UK and day-by-day you could literally see it progressing from one function to another. When it decimated the Marketing team, which was next to the HR team, I knew my number was up… Sure enough, I contracted swine flu and as a result was unable to attend Fulham’s famous 3-0 win over Man Utd.
In all seriousness, the main lesson learnt was one of proactively having a plan in place to guarantee business continuity, along with the health and well-being of our people. So, with Coronavirus (or Covid19, to give it it’s official name) showing every sign of continuing to spread both within China and beyond, what should employers be thinking of doing? In a nutshell, by all means hope for the best, but make sure you plan for the worst. I work in “that London”, and with our crowded transport infrastructure it would only take one super-spreader to infect 10 others on the crowded Central Line in to Bank, who in turn will infect people they come in to contact with, and all of a sudden something that seemed like an overseas problem will very quickly become our problem too. So, as a responsible, proactive employer, what are the sorts of things we should be doing. Here’s a list of things, in no particular order, to get the ball rolling. I’ve already put some of these in place where I work. - Set up a small team who are empowered to have oversight of what is going on, steps being taken, decisions that may need to be made, communications, etc. As the situation is fluid, they should be meeting regularly and be prepared to change things at the drop of a hat. - Communicate. Regularly. In the absence of any coherent company position, employees will make their own reality. Silence isn’t golden in this instance. - Restrict travel to those areas that are at the centre of the outbreak. We have banned travel to mainland China and Hong Kong. If you are doing this, make sure you are fully transparent with your customers, and bring them along with you. Also make sure you are regularly checking the UK’s FCO or US’s State Department travel advisories. Also have a clear line-of-sight as to who makes the final decision, in the event travel is deemed to be business-critical. For example, our CFO is our gate-keeper. - Provide guidance to employees on the symptoms to look out for, and to self-quarantine and seek medical advice in the event that they or any of their immediate family members do start getting any of these. - Caution needs to be taken with regard to screening employees or requiring them to attend medical appointments. Particularly in global businesses, where local laws differ. Common sense should apply, think through the balance you need to manage between your obligation to provide a safe working environment on the one hand, and any obligations around data privacy and confidentiality on the other. Also be careful about the discrimination angle, for example, don’t single out employees based solely on the fact that they are Chinese!! - Quarantine employees who have been in infected areas. Most companies are geared up to home-working, so asking employees who have just passed through or returned from a particular hot-spot to work from home for 14 days shouldn’t be too much of a hardship. Make sure people view this as acceptable, given some will perhaps be worried it may be perceived as a lack of commitment, shirking off, etc. Also have an eye to employees who may take advantage of the situation…! - Most companies have business continuity plans in place nowadays. Is yours up-to-date? Would you be able to continue as a business if you had to close an office, factory, shop, depot, or…? Also apply this thinking through to your supply chain and partner ecosystem, particularly if you have single points of failure in there. - Dust off those succession plans. What happens if your head of sales gets infected? Have contingency plans to ensure continuity. - Ensure the emergency contact details for your employees are up-to-date, particularly for key employees. - Issue anti-bacterial hand gel to employees, and have large bottles in communal areas, kitchens, rest rooms, etc. - Make sure your cleaners are doing a thorough job! For offices in infected areas, instruct them to do regular deep-cleans. For example, we have shut our Beijing office until further notice and done a deep-clean. - Enforcing a clean-desk policy to reduce any infection risk and aid cleaning. - May seem trivial, this, but perhaps think about refraining from what would ordinarily be culturally acceptable hugs, handshakes, kisses, etc. depending on the country. - Who would have thought that something as huge and significant as the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona would get cancelled? Bring this back to your own company, and consider postponing any significant company events and conferences, particularly in affected areas or where people from affected areas may be traveling to attend. Hope the above makes sense. Clearly it depends on the nature, size and culture of your business as to what may be appropriate or proportionate. It may all come to nothing, but why take the risk? As my sister-in-law regularly says, normally over a glass of white, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
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AuthorSenior HR executive who has seen it all. On a mission to simplify the world of work. Archives
May 2020
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