For business continuity to be successful during an economic downturn, leaders must collaborate and communicate to maintain efficiency while keeping workers safe.
With the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial for leadership, HR and all departments to work with safety professionals who are trained to prevent and mitigate exposure to workplace illness.
EHS Today is looking for safety leaders across the country to tell their stories for a new series called "EHS Leads."
We will be highlighting the efforts of professionals to show how company leaders are collaborating or failing to during this time to learn from different industries and perspectives.
An EHS manager for multiple U.S. locations in the manufacturing and electrical industry recently reached out to EHS Today to participate in this project. She wished to remain anonymous. Here is her story.
EHS Today: How is your company responding to the pandemic?
Manager: Our local company is still up and running, with just telling people to wash their hands. It's not feasible for employees to keep their distance based on what we manufacture.
Are departments working together?
Manager: Yes and no. As an EHS manager, I found that there were multiple meetings going on within different groups within facilities and that no one was on the same page. I had to reach out to ensure that EHS was being invited to all the meetings, even if they felt it wasn't deemed necessary for us to be in there. After one day with multiple meetings we had missed, I was told that these meetings all had crucial information. They couldn't understand why we were left out of these.
What are they doing to ensure the health and safety of workers?
Manager: Currently most of our facilities are beginning to shut down because of the state shutdowns. In reality, that's what needed to be done in the first place. If the facility is not shut down, they are looking at alternative schedules for employees to encourage the least amount of people on site. While I understand the concept of this, most states have shut down schools and child care facilities, so what happens to that person who now has to go to shift work with no child care available and their child is not in school? We understand that money needs to be made, but I feel we are lacking empathy in some of this.
Please provide any other details of what your company has done so far.
Manager: Besides adding hand sanitizer stations, posting information and limiting visitors, it's business as usual. They did ask employees to work from home that could. However, there are only a handful of people that applies to. Most states are shutting down bars and restaurants, which is understandable but it is hard for those that still have to travel by vehicle for work and emergency jobs.
Why is it so crucial at this time to work together?
Manager: We always laugh that EHS is last to know, and sometimes that's fine, but not right now. Employees are scared, they have all this information bombarded at them from the media and its overwhelming. They need empathy, they need information, they need to realize that we care.
Everyone needs to be on the same page and be a strong, supported front in this. However, when departments are doing their own thing and leaving others in the dark, you get miscommunication which leads to panic.
Believe it or not, your EHS personnel are the glue that holds a lot of this together. They are the ones to take someone's temp when they do not feel well. They are the ones that listen to someone's problems when they come get a blood pressure check. We're the ones that people come to talk to find out about all the information going on with the current issues because they feel we are most knowledgeable.
We wear more hats than anyone realizes and when we're not in the loop with things, it ends up doing more harm than good and it's not something they do on purpose, it's something that groups within the company need to realize is happening and communicate better.
This is truly the time when we find out if that really needed to be a meeting or could have we just sent it in an email.
If you wish to submit your story to the EHS Leads series, please contact Managing Editor Stefanie Valentic at [email protected].