COVID-19 and your employees: protecting your top assets for the future of your business

Previously we discussed how companies will be remembered for how they react to COVID-19 and treat their employees and customers. Treating both of these groups well will separate your brand from others and build long term loyalty. The key recommendation — stay authentic to company values and customer value-proposition.

In today’s article, our focus is on protecting your employees. They are the key to your business’ ability to adapt to new realities as they unfold. In response to increasing calls to re-open the United States economy, Mark Cuban cautioned that how companies treat their employees now could potentially impact their brands for “decades”.

“How companies respond to that very question is going to define their brand for decades. If you rushed in and somebody got sick, you were that company. If you didn’t take care of your employees or stakeholders and put them first, you were that company,”

Now with some states starting to re-open their economies, what can executives do to protect their most valuable assets, their employees?

Demonstrate that we are all in this together, from the top down

The opening of industry sectors will necessarily be uneven. For sectors that will continue to face challenges, especially those hardest hit like travel and restaurants, top executives are foregoing salaries and bonuses, freeing up resources to keep their businesses afloat. Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price went a step farther reaching out to his employees to ask for their help and input on keeping their company afloat. His employees offered up voluntary, temporary pay-cuts based on their personal financial situations. Along with other cost-cutting exercises the company has extended their financial runway from three to six months to nine to eleven months without having to lay off any employees.

Be proactive; Don’t put the onus on your employees to find needed support

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation poll released April 2, 4 in 10 Americans have either been laid off or have lost income due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Companies can support those impacted by providing information regarding filing for unemployment, health benefits and other assistance programs.

Other companies providing front-line services for customers — like grocery stores, big-box retailers and food delivery — can’t hire fast enough. They are raising salaries and extending sick leave benefits. For these companies, the opportunity lies in making access to these benefits and services as frictionless as possible such as not requiring employees to provide a positive COVID-19 test to access those new sick leave benefits.

Many employees are finding themselves in new remote working situations. Companies have the opportunity to provide not only the technical tools to support this, but also job sharing or flexible hours to employees balancing a full-time job with children at home or being homeschooled. Providing these resources helps your employees stay as productive as possible during this time of disruption.

For those companies considering a phased opening — reach out to your employees to understand their concerns about returning to the office. Create plans that allow employees to navigate the challenges that may still exist from transportation concerns to home responsibilities such as child or family care. Most importantly try to acknowledge fear and concerns around safely returning to the workplace.

Be creative in re-purposing employees’ skills to support the pandemic

On March 20 designer Christian Soriano responded to the New York Governor’s plea for medical masks via Tweet; “If @NYGovCuomo says we need masks my team will help make some. I have a full sewing team still on staff working from home that can help”. After training and testing, his team is making around 1,000 N95 masks weekly. Gap, Nike, Brooks Brothers, Under Armour and other major brands have followed and are providing a needed public service while keeping their talent employed.

If you are looking for more inspiration, we have highlighted some other forms of repurposing where companies have quickly taken their existing capabilities and leveraged them to support different products, with different needs, to different markets here.

Leverage the creativity of your employees to find innovations.

As business models are disrupted, perhaps for good, frontline employees can help surface innovations. Chef and restauranteur Tom Colicchio comments that “Restaurants aren’t going away, but I do wonder what they’re going to look like. I’ve been asking my staff to think about how we can reinvent things. It will change for sure.”

Even in industries not under financial stress there is different kind of stress as current business models are upended. For example, grocery stores have retooled into “distribution centers” with the rise in online grocery orders. Frontline employees are system-hacking right now — how can cashiers, stockers and merchandisers transfer these learnings and innovations to support future process improvements?

Supporting and retaining talent helps navigate through this crisis, but also builds loyalty with employees (both current and future.) As Maya Angelou famously said:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said; people will forget what you did; but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Customers have long memories. As the world starts to settle into its new normal, they will remember those companies who treated both their employees and customers with care.

At Slalom we have a set of core values that guide every action that we take with our employees and our clients — one is “Build and shape a better future.” We encourage companies to look to their employees as the vital resource supporting innovation, recovery and resilience in these challenging times and treat them as the valuable resources they are.

To learn more, contact Slalom Strategy (strategy@slalom.com)