5 Considerations for HR Teams Preparing a Coronavirus Response

I am spending 30% of my days on the topic of COVID-19, something I had barely heard of just two months ago. I remember reading about some issues in China as the new year began and while I am not an expert now by any means, I have put a lot of time recently into working within my business on how we can best be prepared. With the outbreak now affecting more than 50 countries and territories around the world, employees are looking to their HR teams and their leaders for guidance. 

At LogMeIn, we’re fortunate to be leaders in collaboration, making it easy to advise that our employees use our own products to connect without needing to jump on a plane. But how else do we keep business going while protecting our employees from the spread of Coronavirus? Here are the top few considerations we’ve been spending our time on.   

1.      Consider a travel ban. 

Every day, more companies are announcing travel bans for their employees. The question of whether to implement a travel ban has implications well beyond the employee component – from canceling events, disrupting customer meetings and of course, the impact on the bottom line. The more global the company, the bigger the consideration. While many companies are moving toward a true travel ban, which is obviously very relevant if you do business with the highly impacted areas, or have a lot of business travelers, it may not be practical or necessary for all organizations. The key thing to consider is that whatever ban or restrictions you implement now, may last for a long period of time. It’s smart to apply the lens of 3 months, not 30 days, to whatever restrictions you contemplate, just in case. Do some scenario testing for whatever big decisions you need to make. Whatever you decide is right for your business, clear expectations and communications with employees should follow, and of course, with the speed of change around COVID-19, let employees know you are monitoring and will adjust your practices as needed.

2.      Implement a remote work policy. 

Should your employees need to work remotely due to sickness, exposure, or for other reasons, and you are able to adopt a full remote policy, you’d need to provide direction to what is expected of employees and managers. At LogMeIn, we’ve long believed that the future of work is remote, and recently did a comprehensive review of the current conditions and regulations in each of the countries in which we have offices. Where we landed was a set of guidelines that include definitions of flex and remote work, expectations for childcare, responsiveness and trust between managers and employees, along with the financial, legal and operational considerations for each situation. The goal is to be sensible, supportive and sustainable in enabling our remote workforce. Invest in the tools, the infrastructure and the guidelines now, so you can be ready to deploy them if it becomes necessary, and once you adopt it, I do believe you’ll find you don’t want to go back to 5 days a week in the office. It has such a positive impact on employee engagement and, if done right, can not only maintain but improve productivity and help you attract and retain talent in times of both crisis and normalcy.

3.      Stand up a working group to monitor the situation and evaluate different scenarios.

The news updates are coming in fast and frequent and being prepared is important so that you can pivot fast when you need to. Identify the working group and ensure you have leads from facilities, IT, procurement, as well as business leaders that can speak to scenario planning around external events, employee safety and travel provisioning. Some roles such as customer support or manufacturing can’t be done remotely, some employees are located in countries where the local IT infrastructure won’t support remote working. If there is a possibility of certain offices being shut down temporarily, then now is the time to understand what contingency plans you’ll need to keep your business running. We’ve instituted a daily stand up call for 15 minutes to check in, though we weren’t sure we’d need it, better to have it on the calendar. In the beginning, the meetings went longer as we evaluated worst case scenarios, put some tests in place and reviewed our business continuity plans and our communication protocols. We all hope this situation doesn’t worsen but the data suggests that it will continue to spread and now is the time to build, test and deploy your business continuity plans, with the hope you won’t ever need to put them into play. As things change, we’ll know what we need to do, and we’ll be ready. The more you prepare with the right people, the less panic if a moment of true crisis hits.

4.      Communication

What I’ve learned in the past few weeks as we’ve been addressing this situation is what many of us already know – you can’t under-communicate at a time like this. That doesn’t mean emails to everyone every day, but identifying the right audience to brief, leaders who can cascade the information as needed and in a timely fashion. Don’t just think about the traditional top down cascade, but identify other channels or people to ensure messages get out to everyone. Across our 26 offices in 15 countries, LogMeIn has a hub leader model, in that we’ve appointed a site leader for every office. They work locally on employee engagement, social and community programs and at a time like this, they are a great direct route to get information from HQ to every site in a consistent and fast way. 

We've set up a Slack channel to connect leaders from across the business to stay coordinated and apprised of Coronavirus efforts, issues and plans.

There is a lot of mis-information out there and every day I receive updates from people in my network on what other companies are doing, some relevant to us but some are not. As you build your communications, it is worth highlighting one or two trusted sources of information that your company will be relying on, the WHO and the CDC being two helpful and reputable sites.

There is also an opportunity to remind people of the basics and give permission for them to take care of themselves.  Sometimes employees need encouragement to take care of themselves and stay home if they do not feel well. It’s right up there with handwashing – basic ways to stop the spread of germs and keep the workplace healthier, whether it is keeping your hands clean or maintaining your overall health and wellbeing. Leaders need to role model the behavior they ask of their teams, we can work from home, we can take sick days and if we do, we show our teams that it is ok to do the same. And, course, if you’ve been to a travel advisory geography, follow the quarantine guidelines and require that your employees do the same.

5. Leadership

We all look for direction when there is uncertainty and rapid change going on around us. Partnering with your leaders across your company to keep them informed, give them messaging to cascade, answers to the questions they’ll be getting on the front lines, all of these are important at a time like this. Activating your leaders to help lead through any business disruption is key to success. I would also ask your leaders to role model whatever behavior you’ve adopted, whether it be working remotely, self quarantine or travel bans. We look to our leaders and watch when words and actions don’t match; your organization may say that employees can opt out of business travel, but people inevitably worry if there will be judgement going on if they do that. However, if my boss is choosing not to travel to another country for business, then I know it will be ok if I do too. Authentic leadership matters more than ever in times of crisis.

Whether this is just the beginning of the Coronavirus impact on business, or a short-lived outbreak, taking the steps above will help HR teams and business leaders prepare for the inevitable shift to remote work and ensure their ability to minimize impact to the business. 

Keep calm, don’t overreact and of course, wash your hands!

What other steps are you taking to keep employees safe and supported while preparing for the future? 

Jo