Living with COVID means every business has to be a safety business
In December in 2020 I published an article in Jamaica’s oldest and largest newspaper, the Gleaner, under the title: COVID Has Made Every Firm A Safety Business. What follows is the original article with bonus materials.
“For safety is not a gadget but a state of mind.”
Eleanor Everet
I spotted and read an article in May of this year from the World Economic Forum (WEF), What hotels must learn from hospitals for the new reality of tourism, and I was immediately intrigued. This was incidentally the same time that the tourism sector was in effective lockdown with COVID-19 restrictive measures closing the ports and airports to visitors so reading anything that could assist with its safe reopening was of great interest. Tourism after all represents 33.9% of Jamaica’s GDP, employed 120,000 people directly, and generate another 250,000 indirect jobs, making Jamaica one of the most tourism dependent nations in the world.
The article immediately struck me as having wider application than tourism. Much wider. But more on this later.
COVID-19 to put in mildly has landed a tremendous body blow to the Jamaican economy and tourism in many respects has taken the hardest hit. According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) fourteen of the 15 most tourism-dependent nations in the Americas are in the Caribbean and Jamaica is one of them.
The premise of the article is centred around, in its own words “what the hospitality industry could learn from the hospital industry.” It establishes that “hotels and hospitals face a daunting and similar task; re-establishing trust with the public after the initial closures intended to flatten the surge of COVID-19 cases.”
It goes without saying that a patient’s well-being is the primary concern of a hospital and central to this is safety. The article however invites the reader to transfer this thinking not just to hospitals but to hotels as well. Specifically, it invites hotels to “consider re-imagining your business. Prior to COVID-19, you were a hotel company that had safety protocols. Today, you are a safety company that has hotels.”
Welcome your guests
When you think about it this is not a far off or fanciful leap of the imagination. Both hospitals and hotels have the same root word which according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it comes from the Latin noun “hospes”, which stands for ‘a guest or visitor’ and ‘one who provides lodging or entertainment for a guest or visitor.’ In the case of both hospitals and hotels the well-being and therefore safety of their hospes – guests – are of paramount concern.
However, I would like to invite my readers to go one step further to not just reimagine hotels as safety businesses, as important as this is to the Jamaican economy especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but to reimagine all businesses as safety businesses. To echo the WEF article with slight alteration, ‘prior to COVID-19, you were a business that had safety protocols. Today, you are a safety business that provides goods and or services.
In fact, I am going to take things even further by asking all Jamaican businesses not just to reimagine themselves as safety businesses but to re-engineer themselves as safety businesses.
In fact, I am going to take things even further by asking all Jamaican businesses not just to reimagine themselves as safety businesses but to re-engineer themselves as safety businesses. Click To TweetNo matter what business you are in large or small, online or brick and mortar you have hospes – guests – be they customers, suppliers or members of the general public, etc. All businesses from banks to taxi operators, from lawyers to street side and market vendors, from the food processing facilities to the corner shop – all the economic players in our economy (formal or informal) – to combat COVID-19 must reimagine and re-engineer themselves as safety businesses.
It is a stark reality as Prime Minister Andrew Holness has repeatedly said, ‘Jamaica has to learn to live with COVID.’ Even if a well-tested and safe vaccine were to be developed overnight, we would still have to learn to live with COVID as it will take time to inoculate everyone as the logistics to manufacture, distribute and administer a vaccine globally are quite complex.
We of course now have vaccines however the logistically challenges highlighted remain.
Therefore, in order to learn to live with COVID-19 an essential component is, in my view, that all businesses in our economy must reimagine and re-engineer themselves as safety businesses.
But how does one reimagine and reengineer as a safety business?
The WEF article outlines nine tips and I have added a tenth.
Re-engineered safety business
Before we get into the tips it is important that the reengineering is approached with the right mindset. Living with COVID-19 the new normal means a reset to a resilience mindset. In another WEF article, The great sustainable reset: The new world of work after the pandemic, explains why:
“as the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs and markets and economies re-open, our longstanding focus on efficiency and growth in the workplace will likely give way to one on one business-model resilience. This is because we have seen how volatile the world is and we now appreciate the numerous potential discontinuities out there.”
Ravin Jesuthasan
Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Willis Towers Watson
Safety Business tips
1. The safety of your employees comes first. This is the keystone tip that holds all the other together. Employee safety is top priority and it has two critical aspects; what is actually done to keep workers safe and how those measures are communicated to the staff.
2. Create an incident command centre. This group should have regularly scheduled meetings with clear roles and responsibilities. Its function is to have a clear response system in place for quick decision making and information dissemination. These centres do not have to be confined to one business but could include single person businesses or large businesses coming together either by industry or geographic proximity.
3. Universal precautions and training. Training, re-training and continuous training will be needed on how to manage the pandemic from how to avoid bodily fluids, to customer service in the face of non-compliance with safety protocols, to cleaning techniques, etc
4. Cleaning protocols. Following the protocol set out by the Ministry of Health and Wellness should be seen as minimum standards and opportunities should be sought to exceed them. This is also an opportunity to make cleanliness part of the business identity by making it visible by letting the public know what measures you are taking to keep them safe. This can be done on apps, websites, notice boards or even as hand sanitizers or temperature checks are being made at a supermarket, corner shop, taxi, etc.
5. Invest in technology. All or most commerce is now either low or no contact. In order to carry this out investments in technology is a must. One of the most prolific examples of this is the move to facilitate online or mobile payments over cash.
6. Continue physical distancing. This is a critical containment measure in the pandemic. Businesses must as much as possible during operations and while serving customers must maintain physical distancing for example by having clear makers between work stations, in waiting areas or at the point of sale or service.
7. Investigate the science of air filtration and aerosol transmission. Update and upgrade air conditioning systems with focus on air filtration.
8. Understand and track recommendations as they develop for when individuals are ‘safe’. COVID-19 pandemic is a very fluid and dynamic situation and so too are the technologies associated with testing and treatment. Keeping abreast of these developments are important to future business planning.
9. Finally, communicate your commitment to a safe environment for customers and staff alike, and live up to those promises. Investments in training, technology and safety will pay off for the long-term. Join association ratings for cleanliness and safety. The hotels and restaurants that deliver on safety will differentiate themselves quickly.
10. Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate. This one is my addition but I believe it’s a fitting conclusion that in order to live with COVID-19 and shift to coming safety businesses we must remember the words of poet John Donne, that ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’
Bonus material
Inspired by the comments of my Rotarian mentor and business owner, Eugene Flokes, I decided to create a checklist from the ten Safety Business to assist businesses that are seeking to reimagine and reengineer themselves as safety businesses. The checklist can be downloaded below.
Every-business-is-a-safety-business-Business-tips-PDF