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Labour Matters, Davies Ndumiso Sibanda

I DID an article last week on the coronavirus preparedness, but it appears many employers still remain sitting ducks when it comes to coronavirus contingency planning. 

After the announcement by Government this week that gatherings of more than 100 people are no longer allowed, football matches are postponed and that coronavirus suspected cases are being handled in Zimbabwe, many employers started asking questions about what next will be closed. The question to ask is not what next is to be closed but you do some soul-searching and establish the possible implications of the coronavirus to your business and above all to you as an individual. 

The good news is that in a week, there are now many coronavirus contingency plans floating around. 

Some are comprehensive while others are rudimentary. However, all of them are of use in one way or another. In the United States, California is one of the leading states in working from home, which can give us direction and related challenges we have to manage. We can also learn from experiences from those organisations and towns where everybody is on quarantine. Only a fool can continue to argue that the coronavirus will not have a negative impact on his business as the global impact of the virus is already being felt in Zimbabwe today. 

For example, we have a shortage of face masks and hand sanitisers and when they are available, they are so expensive that they are beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. A well thought out contingency plan is a must for every chief executive. 

It must talk to all aspects of the business covering areas such as employee personal health issues, illness, travel and transport, handling of visitors as they arrive and controlling their interactions with employees while they are at work. It should also extend to possible death of some employees due to the virus and how employer will deal with the funeral more so in closed communities like mines and plantations.

Working from home sounds like a very easy process but it is not as simple as people think as not everyone can work from home and coordinating people working from home requires appropriate work methods training and availability of tools to use which might not now be readily available given the fact that a number of working gadgets come from China and other countries that have temporarily lost their capacity to manufacture some products and even where manufacturing is still possible, there are shipping problems. 

A checklist of areas to be covered in the preparation of a coronavirus contingency plan can include the following — compensation of workers during lockdown, keeping core operations running, quarantine facilities, handling families of workers, clinic preparedness, travel guidelines, plant closure procedures, operations security, when people are quarantined, attendance to conferences and other outside meetings, coronavirus education programmes and many others.

In conclusion, the owner and driver of the coronavirus contingency plan is the CEO. He can delegate the crafting to key managers or can contract a consultant to facilitate the process but he remains accountable. It may be getting too late to start on contingeny planning now as the horses have started bolting but it is better late than never.

•  Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on the following email: stratwaysmail@yahoo.