By June 1st, most states will have full or conditional removal of the stay at home order. What is your plan to return to your work site? As COVID-19 has created fear, confusion and paralysis, you will need a clear plan to bring confidence to your employees, customers and suppliers. Here are five key strategies to return to your work site.
“There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.” – Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Return to Work Site
And so it begins. As of April 28th, 97% of the population was at a stay at home order. However, multiple states and jurisdictions have started to remove the order and the trend will pick up through May. By June 1st, most states will have full removal or conditional removal of the stay at home order. Here is an interactive state by state analysis.
Now, how do you address the next situation, returning employees, vendors and customers back to your work site?
As this is being done differently at a state and local level, there will be a significant amount of confusion, fears, concerns and businesses that are unsure if they will be able to open up their doors.
Five Key Strategies
Here are five key strategies to consider when laying out your return to work site plan.
1. Be Flexible with Your Employees
Per recommendation from a high tech executive with thousands of employees, this should be called your return to work site plan, not return to work plan. As many organizations, employees have been working very long hours to navigate the impact this has had on businesses as well as the challenges working at home.
Flexibility is the KEY here. Fear is still a clear and present danger for many people and their respective families depending on your region, health, demographics, etc. Even if all social distancing policies would drop today, many people will still follow them. As many organizations have been working from home for nearly six weeks, create accommodations to make this possible. Watch this webinar on Visilitation, Navigating Your Strategy in a Virtual World.
Another issue is child care and those who are at risk. As school is not in session throughout most of the country and childcare locations are closed in many places, this will also be a challenge with those with families. Be flexible.
2. When NOT to be Flexible with Your Employees
Way back in 2019, I never thought it was ok for my staff to come to work with a fever or a bad cough. And, yes, I violated this on more than one occasion, insert hypocrite here. However, with these current conditions, there is simply no excuse.
Many organizations, including Amazon, are taking employees’ temperatures of employees every time they enter the work sites. Today, there are many touchless tools to validate temperature. Here are some of the more popular gauges here. If you have traveled to Asia, you may have run past temperature screening at airports. This technology will be seen at most airports and major employers in the future.
Keep in mind, these are not foolproof measures and not everyone who has a temperature has the Coronavirus. If someone has a temperature, develop a clear protocol for testing for COVID and a return to work policy for the individual(s) after that has been resolved.
3. Social distancing your workplace
As a gentle reminder, there is no current cure for COVID-19 and it is still infecting new people with the social distancing policies in place. This is not going away in the near term. However, it is important to establish social distancing policies to be prudent and wise. I anticipate many employers will be sued for negligently not following standards established by experts. Those who have been working through the Coronavirus have implemented proper and effective policies. Learn from them. Provide clear instructions and awareness or hand washing stations, proper amount of space and PPE guidelines applicable for your work site. Consider buying for your team the recommended PPE that you will use. Make all safety measures as visible as possible to help deal with the invisible challenge of the coronavirus.
4. Supplier readiness
You may be ready to go back to your work site but will your suppliers be ready? Whether it is toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and now meat – we have all seen the impact of hoarding. The shelves are empty. The second issue is whether the manufacturer, supplier, etc., is back to production themselves. Last but not least, cash flow problems for many organizations. Needless to stay, this will not be an orderly start-up.
Negotiate with your suppliers right now and develop game plans and timelines for anticipated deliveries of key materials to start production so that you have the materials and inventory to do your work and sell your goods.
5. Create a 10-Week Plan
Create a 10-Week Plan to get back to your work site and to begin your new status quo after returning. This will provide clarity for leadership, staff, suppliers and your customers. Create weekly accountability to focus on moving the commitments forward. Most importantly this will breed confidence in your team and start feeling success again.
90-Minute Workshop on How to Create Your Return to Site Plan
Sign-up for this free 90-minute workshop on how to create this plan for your organization. This interactive Zoom workshop will be on May 6th, 8 AM Pacific Time, 11 AM Eastern Time.
Leadership
As a leader of an organization, department and/or your team, people are looking for CLEAR leadership and goals. Fear is the current mindset. Your job is to provide safety, facts, and goals on how you will provide the best way to return back to your work site. We need to reduce this fear so we can start thinking about making a difference again.
If you have any additional suggestions, questions, recommendations and/or best practices, please send me an email to consider them on a future blog.
Here is my Calendar Link for a 20 Minute Strategy Chat.
Links to Top Articles / Ideas / Websites
State by State Analysis to Reopen
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracking
How COVID-19 Transformed Local Economies in 2 Weeks
Professional Referral
Karen Anderson for Acumen Executive Search. I have been a huge fan of Acumen’s team for many years. They do an excellent job of learning the culture to find the right fit for your organization. Stats: 100% success rate for retained searches and a 92.7% employee retention rate which is triple the national average. Please reach out for Karen’s email and/or contact information.
Current Book Recommendation
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think, by the late Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. Check out their website Gapminder.org. Although this is a recent book; it was published prior to COVID-19, the findings clearly prove that the educated and professional trained views of the world are statistically worse than chimpanzees. Read it and you will be surprised and you can wow your friends. (Unfortunately, they will probably still not believe you even though they are facts.)
Past Book Recommendations
The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
What Your Do Is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz
Born to Win, Find Your Success, Zig Ziglar and Tom Ziglar
See You at the Top, 25th Anniversary, Zig Ziglar
Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely
Across the Board, Mark A. Pfister
Upcoming Webinars & Workshops
May 6, 2020, 8 AM Pacific Time / 11 AM Eastern Time. Zoom Workshop on How to Develop a 10 Week Plan to Return Your Team back to your Work Site. Sign-up here or email 40 Strategy for questions / alternatives times to catch@40strategy.com.
Future Webinar, TBA with the American Osteopathic Association.
Free 40 Point Checklist to Conduct Your Zoom Webinar, email me for a copy.
Past Webinar Links
On April 22nd, 2020, we co-host Crisis Strategy: Successfully Pivoting Your Personal Strategy in Times of Change, with Mark A Pfister, Author of Across the Board. Here is the recording.
On April 23, 2020, Vacilitation: Managing Your Team Strategically in a Virtual World, with Technology Association of Oregon
Give this a few weeks to blend into your weekly routine. If you like it, copy the article link and share it on your social sites. Send me your comments, thoughts and suggestions to improve this to catch@40strategy.com. Sign-up here!
PS – If you did not get the pre-blog email, here is the Saddle Up beginning.
Volume 2020:6
