ITB Partners – Management Consultants
Our Business is Your Success
James Weber is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Our Featured Speaker is Matthew Maddox, President, Global Data Services
Matthew Maddox is a creative, results-oriented professional armed with highly successful experience in business advisory, consulting, project management, application development, business analysis, mentoring, and programming.
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Don Turner is our Keynote speaker for our September 18, Meeting. The title of his presentation is “COMPANY RESTORATION IN THE NEW NORMAL.”
Dave Daniels is our Spotlight Speaker.
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Like the eye of a hurricane, businesses raked by the leading edge of the COVID-19 pandemic are now taking a cautious look outside. Though the winds have subsided, and it’s tempting to think that the worst is over, the eye simply gives us a chance to prepare for what’s left to come. But the time is now to begin planning for the rebound.
If you withstood the worst of the impacts of the pandemic so far, you likely have accepted that the storm was coming, and had battened down your hatches (or at least applied for PPP funding to keep vestiges of your business afloat). Now, as we can start to imagine a future, it’s critical to have your plan in place when the rebound hits.
For those who haven’t been willing to consider the details needed in your post-pandemic recovery plan – or simply weren’t willing to “go there” – now is the time to plan for your rebound.
The public has been released from their quarantine in many states and other states are scheduled to open. Research indicates consumers will be ready to shop and dine. The world into which they will venture will indeed be changed. Will their appetite for dining with you also be transformed?
In my view, planning for the rebound – the re-grand-opening into the brave new world – will require a three-step planning process:
Let’s explore further.
Where have your customers gone? Are they still in need of your unique brand of hospitality? Have you maintained your competitive edge? Can you keep your employees active and engaged in the business? Many businesses are grappling with these and other questions, as they fight for survival in an apocalyptic present, and uncertain future. Here are four tips to consider when planning for the rebound and assessing your business:
Most people have already done this – things like canceling recurring services that are simply irrelevant, asking for payment terms on necessary services, and in general, having a series of difficult conversations about labor, supplies, and rent. Job No. 1 is to understand your cash flow – and factors influencing it.
What is your competition doing now? How have they pivoted? Did they reduce hours of operation? Were they forced to close? Is there something you could do with your local competitors to encourage customers to order takeout and delivery? For example, an entity called “The Great American Takeout” has formed, and has encouraged customers via social media posts to takeout food to support restaurants every Tuesday since March 24.
Did you furlough or lay anybody off? With the crew that is left, what has the pandemic done to morale? How are you? Now is the time for frequent communication with your current and past employees. To prepare for reopening, you should prepare a plan to re-hire and train employees.
To keep employees on the payroll (assuming you have sales because you are offering curbside pick-up or delivery), reassign team members to answer the phone, shuttle deliveries, or serve as curb-side ambassadors. In the short term, this could also mean repurposing the business for strictly philanthropic purposes. One restaurant invited the American Red Cross to park its Bloodmobile in their parking lot for a blood drive to help medical professionals.
Planning for the rebound needs to happen now. If you’ve withstood the worst of the pandemic so far, you may find that the tweaks you’ve made temporarily should be considered for permanence. Now, more than ever, understanding the customer’s needs and wants – and how you are positioned to be a guiding force in their upturned lives – can be a make or break proposition. Here are some ways to be a part of this change:
If you’re a restaurant, you might offer groceries or sell toilet paper. Most restauranteurs reduced their menu offerings to optimize the to-go experience. For retailers, this can involve sticking with conveniences like online ordering and curbside pick-up. Creativity is key. Here are some creative examples:
As businesses rethink their offerings, they can run smack into certain “sacred cows” that seem to be integral to their identity. For example, a full-service eatery may balk at delivery options, since that fish dish might be ruined in the 30 or 45 minutes it takes to deliver it. This is no time for those kinds of pretensions. Find a way to make a meal pack, or focus on offerings that can be delivered successfully. Several restaurants have created pop-up drive-throughs, with no more than a tent and a landlord’s blessing. And the likes of Home Depot have shifted to curbside pick-ups even as it prided itself on counseling customers in the store.
Retailers and restaurants that had planned remodeling projects could move those up, but only if the resources exist to do so. Only the best-capitalized businesses will be able to embark on a remodeling project now, but if you can move up the date, it’s worth doing while your dining room or bricks-and-mortar location is closed. Of course, such initiatives can still be hindered by government directives that limit non-essential work and will vary by municipality.
Communication matters more than ever. We may be keeping our distance physically, but we’ve never been more social. We have regular Zoom happy hours, and we can still call upon clients virtually on a regular basis. B2B companies will have closer relationships since they sell directly to their clients, but B2C companies shouldn’t go quiet either. They need to reach out every few days, so long as they are mindful in tone and content.
On an April 8 webinar sponsored by Valassis and featuring data from Technomic, they suggested:
If you can maintain communication with your customers through advertising, social channels, and email, do it. You must be mindful of your tone and message, but the research of the past 93 years is clear – if you can maintain or increase your advertising during a downturn, especially when your competitors don’t, you will be rewarded with higher sales and market share during the recovery.
Planning for the rebound sooner, rather than later, is critical. Those who wait for the rebound to begin will be late to the party. If you wait too long, you will likely lose market share to more aggressive competitors.
With what you’ve gleaned from studying your competitors and company in Step No. 1, above, it’s time to learn more about your customers as they exist today, to get an idea of what and who they may be in the future. The shifts in public policy, social interactions, virtual workspaces, and personal hygiene will likely be tectonic in scope. As a result, you need to understand how the shifts will affect your business and which ones you may be able to exploit.
Ways to learn about your customers now, so you can plan for the Next.
Regardless of your current posture on the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a certainty that the danger will eventually come to an end. Now is the time to be sharpening your pencils and honing your strategies so you can be ready for the next steps.
https://www.chiefoutsiders.com/profile/doug-reifschneider
I hope you enjoyed our point of view and would like to receive regular posts directly to your email inbox. Toward this end, put your contact information on my mailing list.
Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read. Your input is very important to me so; please leave a comment.
Jim Weber – Managing Partner, ITB Partners
Our Guest Speaker is Wendy Elin who will lead a discussion on Workplace Productivity:
Wendy Ellin is a Workplace Productivity Consultant, International Speaker, &
Author of Enough Is Enough, Get Control of Your Stuff. Her insights into living an organized life are shared in her presentations with irreverence, humor, and a level of passion that motivates her audience to TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!
Wendy talks about real-life challenges that we all experience such as email
overload, being on time (or not), reasonable expectations for getting things
done, and much more. It is from Wendy’s 20 plus years in the corporate arena
that she drew from her own successes by working smart, not hard—that inspired her to develop the tools and techniques for increasing workplace productivity and ultimately a renewed sense of peace of mind.
www.WendyEllin.com
404-309-2255
Do you know the best time to plant a pine tree?
TWENTY YEARS AGO!!
Do you know the best time to plan your exit strategy??
The first day you stick the key into the front door of your new office!
Franklin Covey said, “Start with the end in view!”
I know in the excitement of launching a new venture and all the chaos that ultimately ensues, an exit strategy is the LAST thing on an aspiring business tycoon wants to consider. The problem is that once it is pushed to the back burner, it tends to stay there for the next 30-40 years!
So let’s compromise! If you are 55 years old and own a business, it is time to start giving serious consideration regarding what your ultimate destination will be. An “Exit Strategy” is about selling the business off and a “Succession Plan” is about passing it down to the next generation, but both demand serious consideration well before you are ready to step away.
Two realities must align at the same time to maximize the value of a business: The owner must be mentally and emotionally prepared to walk away from a business they birthed and nurtured for the last 30-40 years AND the business must be structured to operate without the daily oversight of the owner and generating the highest level of profitability possible. Invariably, the business owners get to the finish line before the business is ready to command its highest multiple!
Now a good M&A guy can recast your financials to take out the country club membership and the spouse’s Cadillac, but if profits have been leaking out of the business, there just isn’t enough lipstick to make that pig win the blue ribbon!
The reason a 10-year runway is advised is to be able to make any necessary corrections in the business and run at that higher level for at least 3 to 5 years prior to going to market to demonstrate sustainable profitability.
As Dr. Ortego used to say, “The VALUE of a thing is the PRICE it will bring!”
Plan NOW to MAXimize Your Exit!!
Ralph Watson has a varied and extensive career spanning 45 years of increasingly responsible positions in both sales and operations in a very diverse mix of industry specialties, including food processing, textile and apparel, financial services, and professional management consulting.
Ralph served as a Senior Executive Analyst with a number of international consulting companies focused on the family-owned, privately held market where he distinguished himself as one of the top analysts in a highly competitive field. In early 2014, he personally coached 10 businesses in Europe.
Ralph C. Watson, Jr. 404-520-1030
I hope you enjoyed our point of view and would like to receive regular posts directly to your email inbox. Toward this end, put your contact information on my mailing list.
Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read. Your input is very important to me so; please leave a comment.
Jim Weber – Managing Partner, ITB Partners
Bottomline First: Owners don’t really have anyone to talk to about their problems. Reach out to those in your care.
Outside of a preacher in a small church, I don’t know of a more lonely calling than a small business owner.
I will often ask them, “Do you know what your friends think of you?”
They look at me with stunned incredulity since I had only met them a couple of hours earlier and know none of their friends.
I proceed to tell them, “Your friends think they have it made, they think you come and go as you please, hire people to do what you don’t want to do and write it all off on your taxes!! They think you have the Life of Riley!”
Then they say, “You know, you are absolutely right!”
And I assure them if they try to convince their friends just how hard it is owning a business, they think you are pulling their leg!
And THIS is during the GOOD times! The loneliness is only getting worse in the economic environment of the day!
Many times business owners will become overly friendly with their employees to cope with their isolation knowing they get the day-to-day stresses with which the owner is dealing. But that becomes a management problem within the business and makes it almost unthinkable to furlough them when times get tough.
Business owners are seen as “having it all together” not only by their friends and the public at large but also by their families. I can’t tell you how many times I have interviewed a business owner during an analytical survey of their company who was showing a loss on their P&L only to discover he (or she) had not told their spouse. And let’s be honest, men, we are more guilty of this than our sisters-in-business. That stinkin’ EGO of ours gets us in trouble and then cuts off the support we so desperately need!
So to you advisors of these stalwart but hurting heroes of our economy, reach out to them! They need to know there are people and places that can be safe for them to unmask their pain.
Bankers, attorneys, wealth advisors, CPAs, insurance agents, consultants, accounting firms, HR firms – any trusted advisor in their life can just BE THERE for them and let them know it is OK for them to share anything that is bothering them.
If you are in a role they might not feel comfortable due to the business relationship (like their banker), try suggesting they might want to talk to a friend of yours.
As Charles Dickens wrote in the Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time…” We have been brutally snatched out of “the best of times” and forced into what is arguably “the worst of times.”
As a man of faith, I would that all men and women would seek guidance from the Creator of us all to lean into Him and His wisdom for our individual and corporate deliverance.
Let’s all be there for each other as we walk through the valley of shadows.
Ralph Watson has a varied and extensive career spanning 45 years of increasingly responsible positions in both sales and operations in a very diverse mix of industry specialties, including food processing, textile and apparel, financial services, and professional management consulting.
Ralph served as a Senior Executive Analyst with a number of international consulting companies focused on the family-owned, privately held market where he distinguished himself as one of the top analysts in a highly competitive field. In early 2014, he personally coached 10 businesses in Europe.
Ralph C. Watson, Jr. 404.520.1030
Ralph.Watson@BeGreaterFaster.com
Loyalty, not such a long time ago, was a fairly easy thing to cultivate. You give a punch card or green stamps (or even wooden “round-tuits,” some of you may recall) to your customers, and they reward you with frequent visits or purchases so they can earn the points or badges to pocket free stuff.
Even today, as businesses like restaurants, retail stores, airlines, and hotels work to digitize and mobilize loyalty programs, customers still find it exciting and compelling to rack up the rewards.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank—loyalty, it seems, can be a fairly fickle concept—and even with the ease of participating in today’s e-programs, they don’t seem to be creating the brand affinity and “stickiness” that companies crave.
In fact, a third of customers will vote with their feet after a single instance of poor customer service, according to one survey. Keep ‘em happy, however – with outstanding personal service, great products, and minimal gimmickry—and you have an 80 percent chance of cementing that loyalty.
The message here: Being loyal to your customers, in today’s uber-competitive landscape, is as critical—if not more so—as customers being loyal to you.
If it seems like the script has been flipped, you’re right. In the days of Loyalty 1.0, those green stamps paved a one-way street of loyalty, from consumer to company. But now, in the world of Loyalty 1.5, with the ability to gain insights through apps, clicks, interactions, and views, it’s easier than ever to open a reverse lane of loyalty traffic from the company, right back to the customer.
So, let’s step back for a moment and think about what we really want to do. How do we tool our loyalty programs to demonstrate our love of, and affinity for, our consuming public? And, in particular, how do we replicate this online, without the benefit of the human interaction that comes with bricks-and-mortar businesses?
How to be loyal to your guests
Here’s an example using a counter service fast-casual restaurant concept.
Imagine if you will, striding into a local fast-casual restaurant near your office. You’ve been in about once per week for the last two months because it is close, and you like the food. You decide you’re in the mood for their grub again for lunch, so you cross the street, walk in the door, and take your place in line.
As you wait, you look at the menu and think about the meeting you just departed. Now, you approach your cashier, Susan (you know because of her name tag) and she looks up and says, “Hi, Mr. Smith! Great to see you. Would you like the usual today?” You are shocked she knows your name and are impressed she knows your usual order. You reply, “Yes, please,” and add a drink. Susan goes on to say, “Mr. Smith, you’ve been in a lot recently and we love serving you. Lunch is on us today!”
In this scenario, it’s easy to see why you would be floored. Susan not only knew your name, but she comped your meal too. The rest of the experience is equally as stellar (clean restrooms, a spotless restaurant, a follow-up visit from the manager) and you return to the office and tell six of your co-workers. The restaurant was loyal to you — which created an emotional bond, and the intensification of your love for that restaurant brand.
Loyalty 1.0 and 1.5 promised the ability to scale loyalty, and in most cases it did. But to add personalized messaging – like that offered by the restaurant chain — and to attempt to be loyal to your guests on this type of grand scale, takes time and a mastery of technology. Is your company up to the challenge?
If you’ve been around for awhile, perhaps you felt a little déjà vu when you heard loyalty platforms would save your team time?
Many years ago in a galaxy far, far away, a similar promise was made…
The Machine of The Year – 1982
At the dawn of personal computing, and before PCs and laptops became ubiquitous, we were promised that these gizmos were going to make our lives easier and give us more time to enjoy life.
The impact of the Apple II and the IBM PC was fully demonstrated when Time magazine named the home computer the “Person” of the Year for 1982. It was the first time in the history of the venerable publication that an inanimate object was bestowed with this award.
An excerpt from an accompanying article, “A New World of Dreams,” painted a rosy picture of a promised future:
“…Point is, it will save you time. Time time time. And we need all the time we can save. Can’t kill time without injuring eternity. Thoreau said that. Great American, Thoreau.
You say: Why should I want to save time? I hear you, friend. I hear you. You wonder where it gets you, saving all that time when you think about old Henry Ford’s gizmo that was supposed to save a peck of time. Only instead of conquering the open road, we wound up living on it. You’ve got a point. You a college boy? But this is the country of the A-bomb and the zipper. We always save time, good and bad. Tempus fugit. Time is money. Most of all, time is dreams. And computers give you time for dreams.”
Loyalty 2.0
So, how do we upgrade to Loyalty 2.0? How do we blend all that we have learned to produce a loyalty relationship with our clients that is as strong as the one we wish them to have with us? A good starting point is to replicate the 1-to-1 experience – with as much richness as we can – in the digital universe.
For a Loyalty 2.0 program to succeed, it needs to have a few of the following features:
The last four points are the most important. Most Loyalty 1.5 platforms lacked automated campaign and segmentation tools. Or, took too much time and effort from your teams to create the kind of personal connections we are advocating for now.
To get your company on track quickly, you might consider a provider like Punchh, LevelUp, Paytronix, and others that live in the Loyalty 2.0 space.
All of these are vendors that are purely focused on the B2C experience. They are dedicated to providing clients with a mobile-first strategy. It makes it easy to analyze customer behavior, generate insights, and develop sophisticated marketing automation. And it makes customized campaigns and promotions possible. Most offer deep integrations with leading eCommerce/online ordering, POS, and payment providers. All that provides marketers with a single view of the customer for omnichannel engagement across physical retail and digital channels.
Are you ready to take a leap forward into the world of two-way loyalty? By adopting a Loyalty 2.0 mindset, you will find it easier to be loyal to your customers. However, you’ll still need to commit corporate resources to execute with success if your customers are to feel the love.
Doug Reifschneider is a dynamic results-oriented, data-driven professional, Douglas drives nationwide growth through the creation and delivery of unique, creative brand strategies enhancing customer affinity and market position. With 25+ years of executive marketing experience, he strengthens brand equity with resonating positioning strategies. He uses successful marketing programs and innovative marketing campaigns that boost revenues. An innovative leader with strong team-building and collaboration skills, his strategic initiatives generate substantial shareholder and franchisee value and open new revenue opportunities.
I hope you enjoyed our point of view and would like to receive regular posts directly to your email inbox. Toward this end, put your contact information on my mailing list.
Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read. Your input is very important to me so; please leave a comment.
Jim Weber – Managing Partner, ITB Partners
…to you, your clients or other business owners who could use a sounding board at this time: Input on urgent problems (surviving); Thinking through strategy in order to come out of the crisis (thriving); Focus on building/rebuilding value if working toward a sale. Happy to share insights from 20 years as a consultant, coach, and exit strategist; helping clients grow, solve problems, build value and design their exit strategy & succession planning. Working together, we WILL get through this! Stay safe and healthy!
David Shavzin, CMC, Exit Strategist
Founder & President, The Value Track // Co-Founder, Exit Planning Exchange Atlanta
LinkedIn Profile // Our BLOG // 770-329-5224 // David@GetOnTheValueTrack.com
Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. Proverbs 11:14
I have a lot of professional friends who are consultants in a variety of fields of discipline, as am I. So this blog post is not intended to slam any of them or any other consultant or advisor.
I’ve worked with hundreds of business owners over the years and I came to the realization over time that businesses try to talk to their owners!
A business will try to tell their owner if someone is stealing from them, or if their scrap or rework is too high if their marketing isn’t working, which employees are most valuable, which customers are making the most of their profits if their productivity is slipping, and on and on – – –
The question I then ask these business owners is: “Do you have the ‘ears’ to hear what your business has been trying to tell you for the last 20 years?”
It’s humorous when they non-verbally shake their head side-to-side, acknowledging that in fact, they can’t! Their business IS their VERY Best consultant, but they can’t understand what it is trying to tell them because they do not have it structured to provide its wisdom in an understandable “language.”
It’s like a radio station broadcasting EVERYTHING about the business 24/7, but the business owner doesn’t have their “receiver” set to the proper frequency!
You may have seen the NetSuite commercial where the founder says, “If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business!” And he is absolutely right!
Most business owners understand the fundamentals of a P&L – income and expenses over time. They can look down the expense sheet, see “Telephone” “$350!” “Got it!”
But put a Balance Sheet in front of them and the fog starts rolling in! And most have never even heard of a Statement of Cash Flows!
But this “Three-legged Stool” is designed by CPAs to primarily do their taxes, and they are by design and utility, historical records – a ‘backward’ look at the business. In a sense, it is like driving down the road with the windshield of their truck painted black trying to steer by looking in the rearview mirror!
Business owners need FORWARD-looking management reports that can tell them on a daily, or even minute-to-minute, basis, where they are going.
One critical report is an Exception or Variance Report! But the business owner MUST have a BUDGET before they can have an “exception!”
I always ask the business owner if they have a budget, and if they say “No,” I assure them that they DO in fact have a budget, the only question is: “Who wrote it?” Because if the business OWNER did not write the budget, the BUSINESS is writing it for them! And it is an UNCONTROLLED Budget!! Not one that drives increased profitability!
The other essential forward-looking management report is a KPI or Flash Report or a Dashboard report that captures all the data most relevant to the performance of the business. These must be custom designed from an in-depth analysis of the business and its processes.
In closing, many small to mid-market, privately held companies need help with their basic accounting package to get their Chart of Accounts cleaned up and a budget added to their system. Another sign that this has to be a priority is if there are maverick spreadsheets or other rogue financial reports being utilized in the operation OUTSIDE of the main accounting system.
So, take heart, my fellow consultants!! Just get comfortable being the SECOND BEST consultant your client has AFTER you help them get their financial reporting house in order!!
Ralph C. Watson, Jr. 404.520.1030
Ralph.Watson@BeGreaterFaster.com
I hope you enjoyed our point of view and would like to receive regular posts directly to your email inbox. Toward this end, put your contact information on my mailing list.
Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read. Your input is very important to me so; please leave a comment.
Jim Weber – Managing Partner, ITB Partners
The Coronavirus Disease 2019, or COVID-19 has officially started spreading in the United States as many predicted it would. We’ve all seen the precautions to take and how to prepare at home, but what exactly does this mean for your business? In this state of unpredictability, we recommend that companies take steps to make changes and updates now. It is important to build resiliency, stability, and become better equipped to survive through such challenging times.
Jim Cichanski, CEO of Flex HR, Inc. a full-service Atlanta based Human Resources firm, advises “the biggest thing to do if you have not done so already, is create a written plan for emergencies (from bad storms like tornadoes, emergency closings, to viruses) which may mean updating or adding to your current Employee Handbook and or company policies.” First and foremost, meet with management as to how to correspond and carry-out the company procedure. Furthermore, communicate this information with your workforce immediately to lessen the emotions and anxiety associated with the hype. Encourage an open dialogue and share newly determined action plans or ones in development.
Some of the major companies such as Coca-Cola, Google, Amazon, and IBM have already put tactics into place such as asking those employees that have traveled out of the country to voluntarily work from home for two weeks as a preventive measure. Others have asked their workforce to limit travel plans or have canceled previously arranged international business trips. You may want to take similar actions.
Regardless, if employers break down their paid time off from their sick days, employees often come to work with a cold, so they don’t have to use up one of their days. Of course, no one wants for a co-worker to come to work sick, but they do so in order to save their days for when they are very ill or if their child must stay home from school sick. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention have recommended that employers establish flexible, “nonpunitive” policies, encouraging employees who are sick or exhibiting symptoms to stay at home. A spokeswoman from IBM noted, “IBM is having employees work from home where recommended and deciding on participation in large meetings and trade shows on an individual basis.”
Often small companies may not be able to afford all the luxuries like paid time off, or even allowing employees to work from home as a large company may be able to afford. There is no law stating you must pay non-exempt (hourly) employees if they are not at work. For the smaller firms, HR may require employees to use up paid time off, however; in doing so managers will need to open up their policies and allow employees to use paid time off prior to accruing the hours. A simple rule would be to grant them the total years’ amount of accrual, even if they have not earned it yet.
It’s an obvious statement that every single person should be following multiple times each day, but with the Flu and now Coronavirus its more essential than ever to stress that the entire workforce should be practicing virtuous hygiene measures. HR knows the prominence of the handwashing posters that should be placed near sinks and restrooms in the office, so now is a good time to ensure these are all in place instructing employees to clean their hands often with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60-95% alcohol or wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. You should also highly consider putting up temporary posters all over your office recommending “Wash Hands Frequently” or “Sneeze into your Elbow” to prevent spreading viruses. Provide alcohol-based hand sanitizer throughout the office (maybe even at each worker’s desk), tissues and disposable disinfecting wipes. Furthermore, check-in with your firm’s cleaning team to guarantee they are consistently wiping down all surfaces, and especially those that are frequently touched such as doorknobs, keyboards, remote controls, desk areas, and the kitchen after each workday.
If an employee is confirmed to have Coronavirus it is mandatory that the employer notify fellow employees of their possible exposure to the COVID-19. Employers do not need to mention that person’s name under Federal Law, but that there has been a confirmed case and others should be aware. Anticipate that staff may be fearful and anxious and that some rumors will need to be addressed to properly convey the facts of the matter. If an employee feels well but has a sick family member that tested positive for Coronavirus at home, they should inform their manager right away to determine if that person is able to work from home as a precautionary measure.
Every day we hear about the Coronavirus headcount increasing as well as expanding across the U.S. Employers should prepare by putting action plans into place quickly and communicating with your workforce that there is a strategy should it need to be applied. Continue to reassure your staff that the risk of exposure is very low at this time. And although the risk is minimal, employers need to recognize and protect those workers that may be at a higher risk for adverse health complications or be ready to take action to reduce transmission among staff. As people travel to other countries and return to the USA, they may be at risk of this virus or carrying it and not even know. So be knowledgeable and get prepared. Employers need to also consider the increase in absenteeism and consider cross-training personnel, so they are able to perform other work duties than their own in case this becomes necessary. Talk with managers about what work they may need to absorb or what projects they need to delegate to others in this scenario.
Many companies do not have work at home policies, so preplanning is crucial in the event that it becomes necessary for a portion, or an entire organization, to telecommute temporarily. System connections, access to computers and internal networks all need to be predetermined prior to someone simply working from home. Transferring of phone calls and incorporating all the details needed to make that work smoothly needs to be considered and also written out so if the time comes to integrate plans, the process can be easily followed. If your company has an internal IT department be sure to strategize with the team as soon as possible. During this unknowingly challenging period, it’s crucial that Human Resources departments are planning for the worst. Business owners, managers and especially HR ought to take the time to review and update company policies allowing flexibility, communicate the updated protocol, practice hygienic routines around the workplace, create an emergency strategy that includes technology back-ups and telecommuting procedures in the event an employee becomes ill and/or business closure is indispensable.
Flex HR serves almost every industry in all 50 states, including Georgia, Florida, California, North Carolina, and Tennessee, as well as Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Canada, and Europe supporting U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies.
Our Flex HR specialists serve thousands of different organizations, in countless industries, varying from a few to over 75,000 employees.
To Learn More about Flex HR Contact Us.
Thank you for visiting our blog.
Jim Weber – Managing Partner, ITB Partners
I hope you enjoyed our point of view and would like to receive regular posts directly to your email inbox. Toward this end, put your contact information on my mailing list.
Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read. Your input is very important to me so; please leave a comment.
Jim Weber – Managing Partner, ITB Partners