Now that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has arrived in the U.S. and Cana­da, many busi­ness­es are being forced to re-exam­ine their exist­ing oper­a­tions or reimag­ine the way they move for­ward as they pro­vide their prod­ucts and services. 

What do they start doing? What do they stop doing? And who do they turn to for help?

Last week, ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange held a series of online ses­sions for ASUG mem­bers to share how COVID-19 is affect­ing their orga­ni­za­tions, as well as what steps they are tak­ing to address these chal­lenges. We sat in on the online ses­sions and talked to some of the par­tic­i­pat­ing exec­u­tives one-on-one to hear about the com­mon themes and con­cerns orga­ni­za­tions around the world are facing. 

“Whether it is face to face or vir­tu­al, it is extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing to see the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange net­work come togeth­er to share ideas and sup­port each oth­er as we nav­i­gate our way through the busi­ness chal­lenges COVID-19 is cre­at­ing,” said David Was­com, SVP of exec­u­tive pro­grams at ASUG. 

We’re All in the Same Boat — Mostly 

While some orga­ni­za­tions have emer­gency plans in place to deal with pan­demics, most — if not all — don’t have one in place for a pan­dem­ic of this mag­ni­tude. This fact is espe­cial­ly true for those busi­ness­es that work in glob­al mar­kets, because these types of emer­gen­cies are typ­i­cal­ly region­al or iso­lat­ed to one part of the world. 

As more gov­ern­ment bod­ies direct busi­ness own­ers to keep their work­force home when pos­si­ble, many of the exec­u­tives par­tic­i­pat­ing in the calls shared con­cerns over accom­mo­dat­ing an orga­ni­za­tion-wide work-from-home model. 

“We lit­er­al­ly don’t have enough lap­tops or mobile devices to send with peo­ple,” one par­tic­i­pant said. ​“And there is a three- to four-week wait time to receive new­ly ordered equipment.” 

IT to Bal­ance Big and Small Requests

Tony Cae­sar, head of IT at Eric­s­son-MANA, sug­gest­ed that IT teams need to return to deliv­er­ing table stakes for the time being and help address non­strate­gic issues, while also stay­ing mind­ful of the big­ger pic­ture. Which is not an easy task.

“IT is being called on to help set up infra­struc­ture and pro­vide mon­i­tors, dock­ing sta­tions, and key­boards, and to make sure every­one work­ing from home has access to VPN and core appli­ca­tions so that they can get their work done,” said Cae­sar, who also serves on the ASUG board of directors.

Work-from-Home Solu­tions

Par­tic­i­pants on the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange calls shared con­cerns over band­width capac­i­ty and secu­ri­ty issues relat­ed to work­ing from home. Some shared suc­cess­ful expe­ri­ences using vir­tu­al desk­tops, such as Ama­zon Workspace. 

“We set it up two weeks ago, and it was easy to roll out,” one par­tic­i­pant shared. ​“It’s a great solu­tion for those employ­ees who need to work off their own home com­put­ers but still have access to their work desktop.” 

Social Dis­tanc­ing On-Site: Why, How, and Who?

It’s impos­si­ble for some busi­ness­es to send their work­force home. We know about front-lin­ers such as health care providers, police offi­cers, and fire­fight­ers. But the truth is there are mil­lions of peo­ple who keep the wheels turn­ing to pro­duce the food we need, med­i­cine we rely on, equip­ment and mate­ri­als that will keep us safe, cars and trucks for deliv­er­ies, and so on. 

Busi­ness­es with man­u­fac­tur­ing plants and sup­ply chains have had to reimag­ine how to keep oper­a­tions going with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the health and safe­ty of their employ­ees. ​“We’ve always had a con­tin­u­ous shift in our plants where there was nev­er a stop. We’ve had to change that to give time for employ­ees to move about and stay safe,” one respon­dent said. 

Anoth­er par­tic­i­pant talked about how employ­ees who work on the road in pairs or groups are now being asked to dri­ve in sep­a­rate vehi­cles to main­tain a safe dis­tance. ​“We have to rent car­go vans to make this hap­pen,” the par­tic­i­pant added.

Keep­ing the Health Care Indus­try Going

Sharon Kaiser, CIO of New Eng­land Bio­labs, said her company’s response to the COVID-19 out­break con­tin­ues to evolve as com­pa­ny lead­ers seek to keep all employ­ees and their fam­i­lies safe. 

“At the same time, we still need to sup­ply prod­ucts to our cus­tomers, many of whom are using our reagents to devel­op bet­ter diag­nos­tic tools and vac­cines for this virus,” said Kaiser, who also serves on the ASUG board. ​“We have invoked sev­er­al pro­to­cols to pro­vide social dis­tanc­ing to min­i­mize expo­sure to peo­ple by avoid­ing crowd­ed spaces and lim­it­ing the num­ber of inter­ac­tions that pro­vide the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the dis­ease to spread.” 

New Eng­land Bio­labs has asked all employ­ees or con­trac­tors who are not able to work from home to work in shifts — either in the morn­ing or after­noon. The com­pa­ny has even lim­it­ed access to prod­uct pack­ag­ing and ship­ping areas, as well as lim­it­ed cafe­te­ria ser­vice to prepack­aged food and drinks. 

“We are also com­mu­ni­cat­ing fre­quent­ly to our employ­ees about what we are doing as a com­pa­ny to keep them safe and to our cus­tomers to help them through this cri­sis,” Kaiser added.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Communication 

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is always impor­tant, but it is para­mount dur­ing a time of cri­sis. Almost all par­tic­i­pants of the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange ses­sions stressed the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in their business. 

“The speed of change is so fast — it makes it that much more dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend this new nor­mal,” one attendee said. ​“But we need to stay on top of it and com­mu­ni­cate what is impor­tant now and what can wait.” 

Almost all par­tic­i­pants said they receive dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions from lead­er­ship. In fact, they see more of their cowork­ers in vir­tu­al meet­ings now because it is so much more impor­tant to stay con­nect­ed dur­ing times of rapid change. 

Lead­er­ship Mat­ters Now

“We have cri­sis-man­age­ment teams across the globe as well as com­mu­ni­ca­tions teams in place, and folks whose sole respon­si­bil­i­ty is to mon­i­tor all the activ­i­ty around COVID-19,” Cae­sar noted.

The key right now is for there to be one cen­tral mes­sage that comes from lead­er­ship and is dis­sem­i­nat­ed across the orga­ni­za­tion. It is equal­ly impor­tant to revis­it any busi­ness-con­ti­nu­ity plans and be agile in mak­ing changes just as quick­ly as changes are tak­ing place. This requires open dia­logue with key play­ers in the business. 

“Lead­er­ship right now is impor­tant,” stressed one attendee. ​“We’re all just try­ing to do our best in keep­ing the train on the tracks.” 

Reg­is­ter for one of the ASUG Think Tank online ses­sions tak­ing place and stay tuned for a fol­low-up series of the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange online sessions.