Financial Times Europe 02Mar2020

Monday 2 March 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 13

WORK & CAREERS

A nearly empty

tram in Milan as

workers are

advised to stay

at home

Marco Di Lauro/Getty

F

rom Sars to tsunamis, compa-

nies are used to preparing for

business interruptions. The

coronavirus outbreak is the

test for which they have been

planningforyears.

Like any crisis, though, this one has

new elements. They may yet bring

aboutlastingchangesinhowcompanies

manage their workers, and how those

peoplework.

The template for short-term action is

standardacrosslargecompanies:recon-

sideration of business travel, up to and

including total bans, and self-quaran-

tineforpeoplearrivingfromhigher-risk

zones; encouragement of remote work-

ing; regular communication of public

health advice. Among more innovative

approaches, international banks in

Japan are operating split teams to pre-

ventintra-companycontamination.

At the same time, despite the exist-

ence of business continuity plans, coro-

navirushasexposedgaps.

Even though the assumption is that it

is better to communicate more fre-

quentlywithstaff—inparttodrownout

misinformationonsocialmedia—Brian

Kropp, chief of research in Gartner’s

human resources practice, says compa-

nies are “struggling with drawing that

line” between preparation and fear, as

theydid18yearsagoduringtheSarsepi-

demic.

Then, “a lot of companies went out

and bought flu shots and encouraged

employees to get flu jabs,” he says. “A lot

[of employees had] had them already; a

lot felt they were being forced to do

something they didn’t want to do. It cre-

ated anxiety for a problem that wasn’t

there.Oneoftheproblemsishowtopre-

pare without creating anxiety. You don’t

wanttocreateapanic.”

Johnny Taylor, chief executive of the

US Society for Human Resource Man-

agement, says its members have been

asking about the fever tests that some

Asian offices are now applying to all

building visitors. “It makes people feel

better, but the reality is if you’re carry-

ing [the virus], you may not show the

symptoms”andthefevercouldbedown

to a more common virus. His organisa-

tionisinsteadreinforcingrecommenda-

tions that staff do not come to work

whilesick.AtSHRMitself,thisisbacked

by an “open leave” policy that ensures

sickleaveispaid.

MrTaylorsaysapandemicmightwell

bring about improvements to US prac-

tice on paid sick leave — which can

encouragestafftohoardtheirallowance

and attend work while ill. In the UK,

SHRM’s counterpart, the Chartered

Institute of Personnel and Develop-

ment, recommends employers “should

treat any time off taken by employees

who have been advised to self-isolate,

even if they have no symptoms, as paid

sick leave or agree for the time to be

taken as holiday,” although there is no

statutoryrighttopay.

If schools or nurseries close, staff con-

cerns about how to pay for childcare, or

how to take time off to look after chil-

dren, will increase. “Some employers

might agree with staff that they should

take time off as holiday out of existing

annual leave if they want to be paid in

these circumstances,” says Ben Will-

mott, CIPD’s head of public policy. “We

would recommend that employers

should be as flexible and generous as

theycanbeinsupportingemployees.”

The most obvious development

since the Sars outbreak of 2002-03,

is the increase in remote working,

fuelled both by more flexible and

decentralised management practice

and more widely available technology.

Manufacturing companies face more

of a challenge in instituting remote

working or emergency shift working

than their service industry peers.

SHRM’s Mr Taylor believes it would

stretch most companies to institute

remote working widely for more than a

few weeks. “If you really could get away

with that, perhaps you could consider

having a remote workforce always,” he

says.

“The tech is better than it was in the

last pandemic. People are more used to

it,” says Gartner’s Mr Kropp. “Some

managers make it hard, however. We

are telling employers to communicate

with their managers to encourage peo-

ple to work from home. Some are saying

that the employee can work remotely

and it’s up to the manager to explain

whytheycan’t.”

A sustained period of home working

could raise questions both about the

adaptability of managers and practic-

ality of encouraging more remote work.

Mr Willmott says companies should

“identify managers who have transfer-

able skills [which] might mean provid-

ing training for staff to fill in other jobs.

Quite often you’ll have managers who

have been promoted as they have a par-

ticular technical skill but you might

have to utilise their core technical

skills.”

Other management challenges

include the risk that requests by ex-pats

to return home from infected areas will

have an effect on local employees, says

Sarah Henchoz, employment partner at

law firm Allen & Overy. “If employers

agree to this, there is a risk that local

employees will feel very isolated and it

creates a real ‘them and us’ culture,

which is very unhelpful and could even

giverisetoclaimsofdiscrimination.”

Mixed messages might also be a prob-

lem for companies such as consultan-

cies, where employees spend much of

their time at clients’ workplaces. If a

company tells its employee to work

from home but the client wants them to

be on-site, it might prove “inconsistent

and create a feeling of unfairness”, says

MrKropp.

In general, companies say best prac-

tice is spreading alongside the virus

itself. Collaboration across supply

chains and even between rivals could be

one legacy of the outbreak. Companies

have activated established networks of

human resources managers, or joined

informal discussions to reach a consen-

sus about how to react to the threat of

coronavirus.

It is inevitable, though, that this crisis

will also expose some basic deficiencies,

just as previous emergencies did. Peter

Cappelli, director of the Wharton busi-

ness school’s Center for Human

Resources, recalls that after Sars, a sur-

prising number of companies reported

that “they literally did not know how

many employees they had [or] where

they were distributed across locations”.

The silver lining was that disaster plan-

ning “moved them toward better

accounting on those simple matters,

which then made it easier to do all kinds

ofthingslikeplanning”.

Coronavirus may mean lasting change in the office

Business leaders are

thinking flexibly to

protect staff and supply

chains. ByAndrew Hill

andEmma Jacobs

‘One of the

problems

is how to

prepare

without

creating

anxiety’

MARCH 2 2020 Section:Features Time: 1/3/2020 - 17: 01 User: dana.prince Page Name: CAREERS2, Part,Page,Edition: USA, 13, 1