The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is creating a variety of new
responsibilities for business leaders and HR departments that many of us never
imagined we’d have to worry about. In spite of the challenges, this is a time
for decisive and powerful leadership to grab the bull by the horns to weather
the storm.
In this post, we’ll explore:
- How to lead with company-wide and global safety
in mind - How to lead with an eye toward maintaining
productivity during this time - How to lead so your business can weather the
storm of illness & quarantines - How to lead so you protect your business from a
legal and compliance standpoint
How Will You Keep Everyone Safe & Healthy?
Public health needs to be the number one global priority
during this pandemic. Your first obligation to your team is to do everything
possible to keep people healthy and minimize the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
With that said, the media firestorm surrounding the virus
and out-of-control social media dialogue have made it tough to know what to
believe or who to listen to. Let’s take some time to cut through the noise and discuss
what you need to do to protect your team’s health.
Adhere to Expert Guidance & Spread the Word with Employee Education
Your primary sources for information about the virus and
guidance for how to respond should be the World Health Organization (WHO) and
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). CDC guidance directly
informs the U.S. response, but the WHO is also monitoring the pandemic on a
global scale and can provide additional insights.
The CDC’s interim guidance on COVID-19 for employers and
businesses can be found here.
Of course, as an employer, understanding the guidance is
just the beginning. You need to serve as a key source of education and guidance
transmission for your team members. That means connecting them with resources
that help them understand what the virus is, how they can get it, and what they
need to do protect themselves and their families.
The WHO’s concise, highly-visual COVID-19
myth busting article can be an ideal resource in this work.
Augment Your Approach to Attendance
COVID-19 spreads primarily through close contact between
individuals. That’s why the United States government has urged a policy of social
distancing (maintaining at least 6 feet between people at all times and
ceasing all non-essential interactions).
Observing the spirit of that guidance means we need to
temporarily cease using or significantly limit the traditional office work
model that has dominated the last 50 years. That means COVID-19 has crumpled up our
definition of “attendance” and thrown it out the window.
In order to survive this disruption, you need to find a way
to continue productivity through remote work enablement (more on that later in
this article). You also need to open up your sick bank, extend paid time off
programs, and give your employees the flexibility they require to feel safe and
supported at this time.
With the rapid spread of this virus, the odds are, ff you
continue to bring your team into the office each day, you’re inviting
coronavirus through the door and back into every employee’s home as well. In
order to lead effectively at this time, you must address and adjust attendance
expectations.
Cease Business Travel
Nobody should be traveling internationally or even
domestically right now unless it is absolutely necessary. That represents a
major disruption to the way many sales representatives, consultants, and other
professionals work.
While it may be tempting to continue your deal-making
operations, requiring, requesting, or even allowing employees to travel can
endanger your team members and threaten your operations even worse. In the
coming days, you must work together with your sales managers and other relevant
leaders of traveling employees to determine how they can use their time
effectively and productively while staying safely at home.
The CDC’s guidance on travel can be found on their website.
The WHO’s guidance on travel can be found here.
How Will You Keep the Work Alive?
As a community entity, your top priority needs to be to
preserve the health of the workforce and the public. Great leadership at this
time involves understanding that you’re still a business, though, and must find
a way to continue to financially operate.
You still have agreements to honor and new opportunities to
chase down, and that means you have to connect and motivate your team in a way
that keeps the work alive. There are two main components to that: communication
and work enablement.
Great Communication
As we’re all discovering, many of us rely on the physical
closeness and convenience of the office to make sure we stay in the loop. That
goes for leaders, supervisors, and ground-level team members. Now that that
option’s out the window for the foreseeable future, it’s crucial to adapt your
communication strategy.
As a leader, you need to determine:
- Which platform(s) or channel(s) will you use to
communicate important information to the team? - Which platform(s) or channel(s) will you expect
employees to use in order to collaborate - How will you maintain/extend your
customer/client communication strategies during this time?
Once those questions are answered, you need to communicate
the interim communication strategy to your employees and provide them the tools
and access they need to make it work. That leads right into our next topic:
remote work enablement.
Create Remote Accessibility to Work Tools
Practicing social distancing and minimizing the spread of
coronavirus means that, for the work to continue, employees will have to
transition to the home office. In order to smoothen that transition and make
work as purposeful as possible, you need to connect them with the tools and
applications they need to replicate their in-office experience at home.
That means you need to think about how employees will:
- Access email and other official communication
channels (see above) - Share documents for collaboration
- Meet or conference in real time
- Get the ERP, CRM, or HCM data (on-prem or
cloud-based) they need to do work - Continue to serve customers and clients from
home
Answering those questions will require collaboration between
your leadership team, IT, and department- or team-level leaders who know best
what their team members need to get meaningful work done.
Managing
remote work presents some new challenges, but it’s also an opportunity for
many new businesses and managers to get a taste of how tech-enabled remote work
can power the 21st century beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
How Will You Ensure Readiness for Illnesses & Quarantines?
Here’s an unfortunate reality: at the current state of the virus’
spread, it’s highly likely someone who works for you will become ill with
COVID-19, need to care for someone who does, or have to step away to provide
childcare. That means you need to admit that your team will be in a state of
flux for the next few months.
Part of surviving and thriving during that time is having
your leadership team articulate a strong
crisis/emergency plan as soon as possible and letting the work flow from
there.
Build Back-Up into Your Depth Chart
Every key leadership, supervisory, or project management
position within your organization should have at least one “understudy” right
now. That way, if someone has to step away quickly, their colleague can step
into their responsibilities in a way that provides continuity and minimizes the
negative impact. You cannot allow for single points-of-failure within your
organization during this evolving time period.
This is also a unique opportunity to identify future leaders
and rising stars. If you’re looking to “test drive” some of your younger talent
in leadership roles, this is a great chance to step up their responsibility and
engagement levels and see how they respond.
Maximize Support for Critical Operations
One thing your COVID-19 response plan needs to address is
how you will ensure the health of your core function in the event you sustain a
major blow to productivity due to illnesses. Part of that is the depth chart
piece we just discussed, but it’s doubly important to make sure there’s a
support system in place that keeps you delivering the services that drive your
business and pay your employees’ checks.
How Will You Adhere to Legal & Compliance-Based Obligations?
Legislation to address the COVID-19 outbreak moved through
the House of Representatives and Senate relatively quickly, expanding
FMLA and paid sick leave while creating new tax credits to offset the increased
costs and lost productivity. For medium-sized businesses, this may mean a
significant increase in employee leave-related responsibilities.
As a leader, you have two main responsibilities in this
realm: keep yourselves updated on and in-line with emerging guidance and be
sure you’re treating employees in a humanistic time that respects, understands,
and responds to their medical needs.
Avoid Potential Discrimination Suits
Here’s a topic many people are scared to talk about right
now: in the coming months and year, we could potentially see a major increase
in leave-related discrimination lawsuits across business. That means that,
while there needs to be a rigorous approval process for leave during this time,
it’s important to keep an open mind and pay attention to each team member’s
individual concerns, fears, and needs.
Denying leave to an employee who is immunocompromised, needs
to care for a family member with COVID-19, or struggling due to childcare gaps
could quickly become both expensive and major missteps for your business.
The DOL’s guidance on family & medical leave related to
COVID-19 can be found here.
Takeaways
This is one of the biggest moments in recent memory for
business leadership. The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis that requires us to at
least temporarily alter many of our practices to keep everyone safe while
continuing the flow of business. Remember:
- You need to keep your team members safe by
following WHO & CDC guidance - You need to spread the word to your team about
WHO/CDC guidance - You need to halt all business travel
- You need to articulate an official communication
strategy for your decentralized workforce - You need to harness a remote work enablement
strategy for your workforce - You need to build back-up into your depth chart
and insulate your core operations to ensure continuity