The rampaging COVID-19 epidemic has caused a lot of business disruption due to customers panicking and isolating themselves at home. Though many sectors like hospitality and travel have been severely impacted, businesses in many other sectors are looking to protect themselves, their employees, and customers as best as possible to try to get back on rails. However, business owners need to appreciate that protecting the business from the lethal coronavirus is much more than sanitizing the workplace and maintaining social distance. It also means that you need to prepare a set of standard operating procedures for your employees, keeping them informed about developments, and having alternate plans to face different business scenarios. Some practical and effective tips from expert business owners:
Preparing an Emergency Plan Is Fundamental to Survival
As it is increasingly becoming clear that we are not going to see a world free of the coronavirus very soon, businesses need to implement measures that will safeguard their companies, employees, and customers. This will invariably include revamping existing emergency preparedness plans or creating new ones to deal with the changing business environment. Ideally, the disaster management plan should include what to do if your workplace is contaminated with the virus, steps the company will implement to protect employees, how can employees get in touch with the management in case of emergencies, and the way business operations will be handled in case the workplace is infected.
Alternative Work Arrangements Can Help Tide Over the Difficult Times
When it is not possible for employees to reach the workplace or not advisable for them to congregate in large numbers in the office, working from home can be an effective alternative arrangement. If you have already implemented work from home earlier, you will be able to extend its ambit without too much hassle, however, if it is something you have never done before, you need to carefully study all the pros and cons before committing yourself. Implementing a work from home plan also may mean capital expenditure in the form of computer hardware and software that may have to be installed in homes. You will also need to figure out procedures for operating out of homes, eligibility of employees, ensuring data confidentiality, and other things that you take for granted when you are operating normally. However, Michael Giannulis observes that experts consider that businesses can also benefit by incurring less office overhead costs in the form of utilities, air conditioning, refreshment costs, etc. as well as improved productivity. People who work from home are also more productive than those working out of offices, says https://www.inc.com.
Disaster Management Experts Consider It Vital to Keep Updating Both Managers and Employees Observes Michael Giannulis
The coronavirus pandemic has created an atmosphere of uncertainty because an event of this scale has not been experienced by most people during their lifetimes. Since even scientists and the medical fraternity are busy searching for answers regarding how the virus behaves and trying to figure out effective ways of containment and treatment, the information also tends to keep on changing almost daily. This uncertainty about how the coronavirus will affect them and their families can create a lot of anxiety and stress in the people who work in your organization. This can be damaging to morale and motivation and can lead to fear and panic that can further disrupt business operations and productivity.
To negate this, you need to keep both managers as well as employees informed with periodic updates regarding what is happening in the environment, steps being taken by the business to protect employees, altered leave policies, the changes in the health coverage of employees, any restrictions on entry to offices and plants, changes in business hours, points of contact for employees to seek help and counseling, and more. If you are quoting any statistics, ensure that they are from reliable sources like the CDC, WHO or state and local authorities. Make sure you do not fall into the trap of misinformation raging on social media regarding various aspects of the spread and treatment of the coronavirus. Be sure to communicate any announcements made by the federal, state government or local authorities that might impact your business and employees in their proper perspectives to avoid people misinterpreting them and spreading confusion. The information dissemination should be top downward with the managers being informed first so that they can keep the staff reporting to them informed. For issues that impact everyone, email communication and even announcements over video conferencing can be done. Do not make the mistake of remaining silent and communicate at least once a day to ensure they your employees do not feel isolated and start to panic.
Step Up the Sanitization Procedures
Even though it is obvious, you need to vastly increase the effort put in to clean and sanitize your workplace. Even though nobody knows how much cleaning is required, you should ensure that your premises are clean and free from contamination. This not only means that you sanitize your office at periodic intervals during the day but ensure that all the people who are accessing the workplace comply with a set of precautions like wearing masks, sanitizing themselves before entering the office, keeping their work areas clean, not congregating, maintaining social distancing, etc. Make sure that there are adequate supplies of soap, hand sanitizers, disinfectants, tissues, etc. for the employees to use.
Encourage all employees to adhere to stricter standards of cleanliness, wash their hands more frequently, not crowd into elevators, or hold unnecessary personal meetings. It would help if you also encouraged employees to follow proper business bathroom etiquette like cleaning after themselves when using the bathroom stalls. According to the people at One Point Partitions, ” If you and others fail to be clean, all sorts of nasty things can spread, like gastrointestinal viruses, respiratory and skin organisms, fungi and other issues best avoided.”
Conclusion
While businesses actively step up their routines to keep their workplaces and employees protected, they also need to investigate ways of keeping their businesses afloat by adapting to the circumstances quickly. There might be opportunities to launch new product lines that may have greater demand during these trying times or make forays into online marketing or even delivering products to customers. Businesses can also explore the various tax credit/deferment schemes announced by the government or even take on low-cost loans to protect their bottom lines better and survive the hard times.
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