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In the wake of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) Pandemic, organizations that can continue to operate are managing their remaining staff in this challenging economy, either by moving the majority of their office workers to a Work from Home (WFH) option, or through staggered work hours and skeleton crews, etc. Organizations with essential services and face to face operations such as grocery stores, delivery and shipping companies, etc. are providing PPE, physical distancing, and cleaning work sites, and protecting their workers as best they can. Many of them have taken a moment to catch their breath and to best manage their way through this crisis in the near term.
However, among the many current challenges, there is a major risk that many companies, non-profits, and educational institutions may not have considered: loss of key leadership and staff absences in key operational positions.
Large corporations and even governments are now seeing their leaders felled by the coronavirus. The Chairman and CEO of the Altria Group, Howard Willard, is sick with COVID-19, and was replaced by the CFO, Billy Gifford. The British Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, will temporarily replace Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of Great Britain, who is now in an ICU with COVID-19. In addition to this, essential services such as transportation and first response agencies are seeing their ranks depleted by the coronavirus.
Adequately addressing prolonged and wide-spread absenteeism requires practical planning for succession in key leadership positions and for staff redundancies in critical operational positions. Here is some basic guidance to follow for succession planning and addressing critical staffing gaps:
Make sure that everyone in your leadership group is aware of the current situation and the need for succession planning. Your board (for larger organizations), staff, clients, partners, and other major stakeholders must also be made aware of any leadership changes that may need to take effect if a key senior manager falls ill and what responsibilities may be assumed by their temporary replacement.
The person currently in the role and other key managers should brief the person(s) who will be delegated the role (see below), identify their level of authority and specific responsibilities. Consider whether their regular responsibilities will go undone, or if they will now be responsible for performing two jobs, or whether someone else will be further delegated their responsibilities in the interim.
Depending on the organization’s governance structure, you may need to consider creating more formal Orders of Succession and/or Delegations of Authority for the person who is taking over for someone else.
Identify critical staff in the near term and ensure that you have succession plans that are three person deep, including names, contact info., and their level of training and experience. Make sure they are aware and ready to take on a new role and train them ahead of time on any new systems and provide access controls to key systems. Consider having the designated replacement staff person shadow and practice with the person who they may temporarily replace.
In general, cross training staff to take over a number of similar roles and being able to operate with a skeleton crew to get the work done can be a temporary mitigation measure to address the potential for high absenteeism.
For small businesses, especially those owned and managed by the founder or a small group, filling leadership positions may be difficult. In some cases, designating a senior manager or deputy to assume some specific responsibilities for a short term is the best solution, following the same guidance as given above. However, certain responsibilities might be restricted such as financial transactions, for example limiting authorized payment amounts and payees or moving checks for vendor payments to electronic bank transactions controlled by a separate fiduciary agent, such as a lawyer or accountant, basically someone you trust.
If you are a sole proprietor and conduct a majority of work online, then think about someone with a similar skill-set in your professional network, perhaps someone with whom you may have worked on a project, and consider reaching out to them ahead of time to ask for and offer mutual aid to continue to support your customers.
Besides providing health safety measures in the workplace, most small and medium sized businesses (SME) that need to continue their production operations in a factory or processing facility should consider developing their reserve staff corp, and training them in advance, this may be from recently furloughed staff or through a local employment office or standard recruitment efforts.
Universities and colleges are not immune from the potential for absenteeism. Many higher education institutions (IHE) are in a particularly tough situation with a significant number of elderly faculty who are at higher risk to COVID-19, and also have a mix of adjunct and tenured faculty on staff. Even though most IHE have moved their courses online, professors may fall ill and be unavailable to deliver a course. Although certain academic policies and faculty union rules may need to addressed in order to put them in place, developing a formal mutual aid plan where one faculty member who is versed in and capable of teaching a subject area and able to takeover the delivery of a course is one way to address this issue.
In addition, IHE help desk support staff may be provided through a cadre of graduate and work study students and/or outsourced with an IT provider for their learning management systems. Any of these pools of workers face the same risk of absenteeism, and developing a support system to fill in for them on a temporary basis can keep academic operations running.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so start planning today. If you need help with any of your business continuity and crisis management needs, just reach out to us.
Andrew Boyarsky is President of Pinnacle Performance Management, a business continuity and disaster recovery consultancy focusing on SME, non-profits, universities. He is also a Clinical Associate Professor in the Management and Systems MS at NYU and in the Emergency Management Graduate Program at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a part of the City University of New York. He is also host of the podcast Riding the Wave: Project Management for Emergency Managers.