COVID Woe-Vid
When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
John F Kennedy
I know, I know. These quotes can be annoying at times like this. Regardless of your industry, it’s probably impossible to see any potential opportunities stemming from COVID-19 right now, and indeed they may well be few and far between. But there certainly is a present danger, so if nothing else, that must be faced down. In itself that presents an opportunity of sorts: to motivate your team to pull together as a unit to face down this crisis as best you can.
But where to start in terms of planning your business response? For sure, there’s plenty of practical advice out there to guide you at a micro level (tips on personal hygiene, social distancing etc.). Unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation and drama floating around too. As a business owner, manager, team leader, whatever your role, when you search around for practical points to consider when planning your response, there’s actually very little out there to guide your businesses on how to plan their overall response.
With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to pull together some pratical points to consider as you plan an effective business response to COVID-19, regardless of your sector or indeed business size.
Note: If the points outlined below resonate with you, at Dobiquity we have created a COVID-19 Readiness Assessment Checklist, a downloadable app to help you better plan your business response. The COVID-19 Readiness Assessment is available to view at www.dobiquity.com
Lead to succeed
This is hardy rocket-science is it? Every effective crisis response, or planning initiative needs a leader, so your first step is to assign a senior manager(s) to lead the organisation's COVID-19 response. Or, maybe there's somebody within your business that's really eager to take on extra responsibility and prove him or herself - that presents an individual opportunity for personal development, doesn't it? Of course, nobody can act alone so the next step will be to assemble a cross-functional COVID-19 team (probably better to give it a fancier name: I know one company that's calling it VirusBusters) to create and implement an effective response plan. Like any team you’ll need to agree clear roles and responsibilities between team members and document where appropriate.
Get the facts
A few months ago, COVID-19 was a Chinese problem, so the reality is we are entirely unprepared for what's suddenly hitting us. So, to plan an effective response you’ll need to engage appropriate external expertise to guide the work of the COVID-19 team. And consultation before action will be vital here. In doing so, you’ll need to consider points like:
Consult with national health authorities to define general COVID-19 risks, and those specifically related to your sector.
Review applicable government health alerts and identify new requirements for incident reporting etc.
Engage with relevant trade associations and peers to gather advice to help guide the efforts of the COVID-19 team.
Consult widely internally at the earliest opportunity to reduce employee fears and listen to their concerns.
Get appropriate legal advice to identify any potential legal ramifications associated with your COVID-19 response.
Review your insurance policy to ensure any enhanced COVID-19 risk factors are covered.
Meet with suppliers to define potential impact on supply chains, particularly from suppliers based in high-risk locations.
Consult with food service providers to define measures to minimise infection risks in canteens etc.
Quantify the risks
Every business in every sector will face its own unique challenges in responding to COVID-19, and those challenges will probably differ greatly. To truly understand the risks you are facing you'll need to conduct a business-wide risk management assessment to identify potential impacts of COVID-19 on operations. Consider the following points as you do:
Identify potential changes in consumer behaviour due to COVID-19 and determine impact on your products/services.
Define the many HR issues associated with COVID-19, particularly if infection rates increase significantly.
Identify the critical and non-critical job roles in case of a worst-case scenario emerging.
Identify any new administrative or recording procedures required to manage the COVID-19 response.
Consider how any COVID-19 preventative measures taken might impact on customer perceptions of your organisation.
Based on you findings, use scenario mapping to determine the additional measures to be taken if the COVID-19 threat escalates.
Plan your response
Of course, the objective within your business is to prepare an effective COVID-19 response plan, based on expert advice received, consultations and risk assessments. Like any planning process there’s some common sense do’s and don’t:
Agree and communicate key roles and responsibilities for implementing the plan.
Ensure the plan meets accepted national standards and seek expert validation before implementation.
Estimate the potential financial impact of COVID-19 on the organisation across various severity levels.
Conduct tests on key elements of the plan to assess internal readiness and address shortcomings.
Plan responses to the range of HR risks identified: for e.g. employee travel restrictions, sick leave, remote working etc.
Spread the word, not the virus
It could be argued that some people are completly over-reacting to the crisis, whereas others are downplaying it to a dangerous extent. The best path is of course a clam, rational response and whatever you do you'll need to counteract the rumour mill and scary headlines associated with COVID-19. You can’t change the wider communciations picture, but you can:
Establish a communication strategy to inform all stakeholders of the organisations's response to COVID-19.
Ensure all communications are designed to accurately inform stakeholders, but also to reduce panic and over-reaction.
Display approved health notifications and COVID-19 guides for your employees and customers.
Provide regular COVID-19 updates to all stakeholders and maintain open communication to facilitate ongoing feedback.
Ensure that all suppliers and contractors have appropriate plans in place that adhere to your defined COVID-19 plan.
Ensure that appropriate rules and procedures are in place for any visitors accessing your premises.
Communicate any changed HR procedures to employees to ensure all are familiar with revised procedures etc.
The manner in how you ccommunicate with stakeholders during the crisis is a clear opportunity for you to put your best foot forward as a business.
Train, train, train
At times of business crisis employees are expected to rapidly adjust their behaviour, but are often left to their own devices to figure out how to do so. With regard to your people you need to:
Provide enhanced personal hygiene training for all employees to help minimise infection risks.
Promote personal hygiene best practices on a daily basis i.e. coughing and sneezing, handwashing etc.
Ensure all cleaning personnel are trained to implement enhanced cleaning procedures.
Record all additional training given to employees in response to COVID-19.
Take a 'fresh eyes' look at what you do
It might seem like a tenuous opportunity, but the reality is that a crisis like this forces you to review your key process which can actually be a good thing. As you do so, you should:
Review key business processes to minimise face-to-face interactions in the short term i.e. use video calls etc.
Consider how expanding online services for your customers could help the business to better navigate COVID-19.
Enhance all cleaning and waste management processes in line with expert guidelines to better respond to COVID-19.
Implement the agreed HR policies and procedures identified to respond to COVID-19.
Think investment not cost
Just as with any crisis that impacts on business life, you’re likely to take a significant cash flow hit in the coming months, just at the very time you need to throw money at countering this problem. But you’ve got to view this funding as an investment: put the right resources in, you’re protecting your business and creating positive goodwill with stakeholders. Don’t invest and you’ll do the opposite. As you do look at what resources are required:
Prepare a COVID-19 response budget to ensure appropriate funds are allocated to implement the response plan. Look at government and other supports available.
Ensure that adequate supplies of approved hand sanitizers are available for employee and customer use.
Provide adequate soap and paper towels in public and employee toilets.
Offer Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for employees, where appropriate, and provide training on its use.
Now, to close this out, none of the above points are intended as anything more than common sense and best practice. This list of considerations is not intended to be an exhaustive one either, or a replacement for seeking your own expert advice - which is always advisable. However, by gathering these points into one place, this will hopefully give you a clearer roadmap to plan your COVID-19 response. Of course, like any planning process you’ll need to:
Define the approved sources of information that will provide your organisation with regular updates on COVID-19.
Agree review mechanisms and timelines for the COVID-19 team to review and update plans as the situation evolves.
Make contact with other organisations, nationally and internationally, to share best practices.
As mentioned, if the points outlined here resonate with you, at Dobiquity we have created a COVID-19 Readiness Assessment Checklist, a downloadable app, that will:
Provide a list of established guidance criteria for responding to COVID-19 against which you can self-assess your organisation.
Allow you to identify areas to be addressed in order to better respond to the crisis.
Help you demonstrate to stakeholders your commitment to meeting the COVID-19 challenge.
Enable you to track your progress over time through subsequent audits.
Support comparison of levels of readiness across multiple locations, if applicable.
The COVID-19 Readiness Assessment is available to view at www.dobiquity.com
Best of luck.