Posted By Richard Holmes

Posted on18th March 2020

Staying in touch with your workforce is a critical part of managing coronavirus within your organisation, ensuring that your people remain informed on latest developments and how their work may be affected.

Communicating efficiently is also paramount in protecting your business, as everybody within the organisation has an important role to play in preventing the spread of COVID-19.

By having a robust response and communications plan, you will be best placed to deliver the most up-to-date information on how employees can help to minimise the risks and ultimately keep themselves and their families healthy.

Expanding on your response plan

Once you’ve decided how you’ll respond to potential coronavirus scenarios, it’s important to think about how you’d communicate these to employees, customers and other stakeholders should that situation arise.

Start the process by making a list of all your stakeholders. As well as employees and customers, this might include suppliers, partners or agencies you work with, the media and even other tenants in your office building.

Next, think about all the different ways you have of communicating with these stakeholders. Make a list of all of your internal and external communication channels. These could be:

Internal channels:

  • Email
  • Instant messaging
  • Intranet
  • Team meetings

External channels:

  • Social media
  • Customer service team
  • Email
  • Website(s)
  • Media outreach/press release

Go back to your Response Plan and add in which of the stakeholders need to be consulted or informed in each of the scenarios and which communication channel would be the most appropriate.

Communicating efficiently with your team

One of the most challenging things about an outbreak like COVID-19 is being able to respond in a timely way. Responding correctly and quickly can make a significant impact when it comes to limiting the impact of this coronavirus on your company.

Looking back at your Response Plan, start to draft out some of the key communications you might use in the different scenarios. This could either be bullet points or a ready-to-go template depending on your available resources.

Next steps

Now that you have identified all eventualities when it comes to coronavirus within your organisation and crafted key messaging relating to each possible outcome, you are better equipped to deliver timely communications to ensure the safety of your people and your business.

Remember to keep in regular contact with all employees, whether they are working remotely or in the office, and that their contact details are up to date should any developments mean you have to contact people out of hours.

You can find copies of our Response Plan template and further advice in our free employer guide to coronavirus.

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