The COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant impact on all industries around the globe. Although a consensus has been arranged between some companies and governments to work together to help slow the transmission of the disease, it continues to spread rapidly, affecting almost every country around the world.
This brings up the question — How should industries respond to the COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted lives and businesses worldwide? We believe that people’s strength lies in their collaborative efforts and ability to bring all industries together to share best practices and knowledge to address the challenge that impacts all people, customers, and businesses around the world.
Here we suggest some broadly applicable actions that industries can undertake to help tackle COVID-19 and support their consumers and employees.
Essential actions from the business community
Taking measures to protect the employees’ health and safety should be the key priority for businesses. Of the 158 U.S. companies surveyed, 38% reported that their human resources departments had been reviewing or revising their procedures to better protect their workforces.
Information about what the company is doing for its employees and communities is also essential. We all understand that safety is not a game, but making learning about safety fun can help promote safety into the company culture. We suggest creating funny safety-themed videos, quizzes, videos to show that you are working from home and are self-isolated while remaining efficient and productive in their work.
Companies can support and protect their employees by practicing some basic protections like no-travel and work-from-home policies for workers and physical-distancing and safe product delivery measures for consumers.
Industries must stay close to their customers by navigating the confusion and anticipating the behavior. This means that companies should invest in digital marketing and develop more efficient customer communication channels. Customers’ shifting preferences amid the CoVID-19 pandemic are not likely to go back to pre-outbreak models soon.
Companies also can support their consumers by providing free services, equipment, or expertise. For example, several companies have shifted their production to create medical masks and clothing. Unilever has donated free sanitizer, soap, bleach, and food worth €100 million to the world’s neediest - with the massage ‘’We will fight this pandemic together.’’
In conclusion, working together to be part of the solution means developing lines of communication and strategies with customers, employees, competitors, and partners to identify how you can help.
Here’s the list of actions industries can take:
- Follow government advice regarding best practice around cleaning and social distancing
- manage your employees’ concerns regarding the risk of virus infections in the workplace and address communication in cases of employee infections
- Develop online platforms to sell your products and ensure the quality of goods sold online
- Provide legal guidelines in terms of employer-employee rights and obligations
- Ensure clear, transparent and timely communications to support customers and employees
- Review and renew business continuity plans to reflect the changes in the marketplace
- Be ready to change operations to make new products
- Optimize budgets and Increase focus on cash management
- Develop alternative customer trust and engagement measures
- Estimate your opportunities and risks
- Drawdown available lines of credit
- Develop policies responsive to customer needs, for example, product offering and price plans with sensitivity to increased customer financial difficulty
- Ensure continuity of call center and customer operations
