What Can You Do to Ease Your Employee’s Anxieties about Coronavirus?

If your company doesn’t have an infectious disease outbreak response plan in place for COVID-19 (coronavirus or any life-threatening illness, for that matter), you’re not alone. The recent threat of a coronavirus outbreak has served as a wake-up call for many organizations previously unprepared for an event of this magnitude. All employers should establish a plan to protect their workforce, as well as ensure that operations continue to run smoothly.

In any crisis, there are planning and response phases. All businesses that are concerned about the coronavirus should start their planning phase with a needs assessment.

• Identify any possible exposure and risks to your employees. For example, are your employees traveling to or returning from foreign countries? You will want to identify those people to determine where the most risk is. Also, review the probability of risk to the organization. If there is a risk, will it affect the entire organization or only segments of it?
   
• Review your current HR policies to ensure they are in line with public health recommendations and meet existing state and federal workplace laws.
   
• If health authorities in your city or state recommend that you increase the physical distance among employees, look at ways you can establish policies and practices like telecommuting or staggered shifts. Also, think about ways you can minimize exposure between employees and the public if the situation calls for that.
   
• Think about the essential jobs, business functions and parts of your supply chain that you need to maintain business operations. An outbreak can increase absenteeism or interrupt your supply chain, so you’ll want to identify these essentials functions as part of your plan.
   
• Consider canceling non-essential business travel, if there is an outbreak.

Once you have assessed your risks, you must have a communication plan for your organization. This message from leadership will help employees understand that you have an infectious disease outbreak response plan and implementation schedule. Communication also should include the latest information on diseases.

Even if your organization doesn’t have all the answers or the plan isn’t perfect in the beginning, simply having a plan provides transparency to your employees about what you are doing as an organization, your implementation schedule, and what would happen, should someone in the organization contract or become exposed to the coronavirus or any other infectious disease.

If you need help establishing and executing your plan, sign up for SkillPath’s new one-hour premium webcast, Coronavirus in the Workplace: Crisis Management Planning. During this presentation, an HR and legal expert will walk you through the critical steps of putting together a practical response plan.