COVID-19: How To Re-Structure Your Engineering and Technical Teams

Joe Van Tassel 12 Mar 2020

Remote Working, Hiring Temps, and More

With the Coronavirus also known as Covid-19, continuing to wreak havoc in the world, it’s important as a business owner and manager to have a contingency plan and mitigate any risk of losing valuable employees. You may think having people out on sick leave is no big deal, but we are seeing a lot of employers lose valuable people and lose out on big profits as a result. 

Additionally, now is an important time to show your strength, foresight, and culture as a company. Employees are looking for guidance and reassurance. They want to be supported by the company they work for and be taken care of.  To help you create a process and plan, we have six recommendations to prepare your business for COVID-19: 

Setting up remote work

One of the number one adjustments companies are making to ensure their employees stay healthy and able to work, is allowing for remote work. This is so common with many businesses already, but a few tips will ensure you’re ready to go if you need to get people out of the office. 

1. Have a process for communicating. We highly recommend Zoom or Google Chat for video calls, with a calendar that you are committed to. We do Monday and Wednesday all-hands video calls for remote workers and then daily calls as well for different roles and departments with emailed reports as needed. 
2. Offer cell phone and wifi reimbursement if necessary. Some people will want help with paying for additional usage of data. Be prepared to financially handle that if necessary, and be sure to make the policy universal for all remote workers.
3. If employees are hourly, there is software that can track how long and often people are interfacing within your software or programs to ensure efficiency is still high. Be sure to disclose the expectations you have for remote employees so that everyone is clear on what should be done. 

Hiring temps/ contract employees 

If you unfortunately have any employees that are impacted by Coronavirus, you may want to consider hiring a temp to replace or supplement them in this new job market. You can hire a temp for a day, week, or year, so the options are really endless. For technical jobs this can be a great resource so that someone qualified can jump in and help get things done quickly, without you having to hire long-term. If you don’t already work with a headhunter or recruiting firm, now is a good time to find one that can help you quickly if need be. 

Sanitary work environments

People are joking about the paper towel shortages, but it is a good idea to stock up. Be sure to have paper towels, toilet paper, kleenex, hand soap, and hand sanitizer readily available. Offering Clorox wipes, and increasing any housekeeping for a physical office is recommended as well. 

Employees want to feel safe and taken care of during this time of stress and anxiety. 

Know your state’s sick leave policies

If you haven’t brushed up on sick leave and leave of absence laws, now is a great time to do that. Your company may also offer enhanced policies, so be sure to know what is required of you by law, and what you have put in place for employees. 

Consider a travel ban

While you can do everything in your power to reduce human interaction, it won’t matter if employees are still out for meetings and going to conferences. Consider banning major travel by air, events with large amounts of people, and any outings that expose employees to Corona Virus or make them feel obligated to interface with potentially compromised people. Now is a great time to save money on those annual conference tickets, and work instead on building one-on-one relationships.  

Evaluate the level of the indispensability of each role 

This is not a fun part of running a company, but it’s important to know in a time of crisis who you really really need and who you can possible do without if necessary. In the case of COVID-19, we feel it is important to be able to act quickly in replacing or supplementing a job. If there are roles that are absolutely indispensable for you to be able to operate, start coming up with a contingency plan now, and get in touch with recruiters who can help you if you get into an urgent situation. The coronavirus job market has created new roles to fulfill and shifted markets entirely, so it’s important to adjust to the changes.

While the world tackles this virus differently in each country, it is up to business owners and managers to help in any way they can. Additional stress at work is no one’s friend, so we hope these basic considerations will help you be ready for whatever happens. If you need more information contact us HERE