Kcoe Isom hosts crisis planning webinar

March 25, 2020

BY Matt Thompson

Kcoe Isom hosted this week the first in a series of webinars aimed at helping businesses affected by the coronavirus disaster. While the main purpose of Tuesday’s webinar was to discuss crisis planning and employee communication, the Kcoe team also discussed emergency family and medical leave and offered tips for working with employees as the financial and public health crisis continues to unfold.

Right now, communication is extremely important, said Shaunna Jones, talent advisor. “You cannot over-communicate in this time,” she said. “You just can’t.” She advocated not only communicating to employees and stakeholders about actions the company is taking during the crisis, but also listening to employees. “Listen to your stakeholders’ concerns,” she said. "There's a lot of anxiety out there and you are in a position to not only to communicate in one direction, but to also receive feedback and information from those individuals who need your support."

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Danielle McCormick, principal, agreed and added, “What employees need most right now is consistency anywhere they can get it, whether they’re working or not.” She also said it’s important to identify how communication will take place, whether through email, applications like Microsoft Teams or Skype, or through phone calls.

Jones also added that once the initial response has been completed, important steps include creating a crisis management team and a business continuity plan. While dealing with the crisis, she added, collect information about what works and what doesn’t, which will inform the business continuity plan. “Just gather that as you go and you’re in your evaluative phase and you’re looking back at what can be done to shore up those gaps in the future,” she said.

A large portion of the webinar was devoted to questions from attendees, many of which were focused on emergency medical leave, and the requirements of both employers and employees to take advantage of the recently announced relief.

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To end the session, Melissa DeDonder, senior associate, outlined tips for working remotely, as a preview of a future Kcoe webinar. “Think about how to keep your remote workers secure,” she said. “There are tons of new phishing scams coming out. … Make sure your training and your knowledge is up to date.”

More information about how to manage the COVID-19 crisis is available at Kcoe’s website.

 

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