Why Video Should Be a Part of Your Business Continuity Plan

Video should be an integral part of any effective enterprise communications strategy, but the business implications of COVID-19 are making it apparent just how important it is. This situation has illustrated the fact that even the biggest companies in the world can suddenly find themselves in the midst of a crisis

Viral pandemic isn’t the only sticky situation that can derail your company. You should also be aware of other issues such as natural disasters, data breaches, social media gaffes, and PR meltdowns, among other things. This is why it’s so crucial to have an effective business continuity plan. By planning ahead, your organization is able to respond calmly and effectively to any scenario, while keeping up morale in the company and boosting confidence amongst customers and partners. 

But sometimes, it isn’t enough to have a continuity plan written down on paper. The advent of video provides a unique opportunity for enterprises who want to breathe life into communications and confront the issues head-on with a human face. Here are some reasons you should integrate video into your corporate crisis communications strategy. 

It’s Important to Visually Reach Employees During a Disaster


Decades of research have shown that visual content can be processed more effectively by the brain. In fact, one researcher found that watching a one minute video is the equivalent to hearing 1.8 million words. This makes video an exponentially more effective medium for critical information, allowing the messaging to have a higher level impact, understanding, and retention. 

Disruptive events can create a host of issues for company leaders. Everything from lost productivity to employee assistance must be coordinated. It’s crucial that employees feel supported and hearing directly from the leadership team can help your teams regain a sense of normalcy in an uncertain situation. 

While it may be tempting to just send an email or post something on your company intranet, enterprise video gives senior leaders more control over messaging. It’s an easy way to tell a story in a more personalized way that is engaging for everyone at your organization. Executive leaders should always convey a tone that emphasizes security and confidence. Be sure to position yourself as the voice of reason and stability during this crucial time, don’t make false promises, and provide a message that is hopeful, rather than despondent. 

While these are external-facing communications, they are great examples of how your leadership team can use video for effective internal messaging during a crisis:

  • Back in 2013, President Obama had a lot riding on the launch of the Affordable Healthcare Act website. When things didn’t go as planned, people started to lose faith in the government’s competency to roll-out such an ambitious initiative. In a great PR move, Obama attacked the issue head-on by appearing on Zach Galifinakis’ show, “Between Two Ferns”. The video went viral, reached new demographics, and helped mitigate the mess with humor.

  • In the age of the cell phone, catching corporate blunders on video has become more ubiquitous. That’s exactly what happened to Starbucks in 2018 when two black men were kicked out of Starbucks, despite having done nothing wrong. The video spread like wildfire over social media, raising questions about racial bias in the company. 

To combat the backlash, Starbucks President and CEO, Kevin Johnson, wasted no time taking responsibility for the incident and even went as far as posting a video apology on the company’s website. Video allowed him to respond quickly with messaging that was clear, direct, and reassuring. He also appeared on several occasions, taking full ownership of the situation at every turn. 


  • Whole Foods co-CEOs, Walter Robb and John Mackey, stepped up to the plate when customers discovered they were being overcharged due to improperly weighted fruits and vegetables. Both appeared on video, owned up to the blunder, making clear it was never their intention to rip off shoppers and outlined the steps they were taking to fix the issue.

Align Business Objectives


For most organizations, distributing effective company-wide communication is difficult on the best of days. But in times of crisis, lack of information can fuel rumors and misinformation which can quickly take the place of facts. Video gives leaders the ability to quickly produce content that succinctly explains the details surrounding a crisis, what actions staff should take, and the company’s strategy for reducing impact on business. 

Once the initial shock of the crisis has passed, everyone’s attention will turn toward restoration efforts. As these endeavors get underway, it’s especially important to keep your workforce informed about next steps. Examples of things you may want to outline include, but are not limited to:

  • Updated office hours for the days/weeks ahead
  • Updated remote work policies
  • How to log time off work due to disaster
  • Child care policies
  • Which parts of a building may be unsafe
  • Road conditions
  • Dress codes
  • How to provide updates to your supervisor

Of course, next steps aren’t the only thing you should be providing clarity on. During a crisis, there’s a high probability that your employees will be distracted and off their game. They might be worried about the security of their jobs, their family, and feel isolated or disconnected if there have been work from home orders issued, as has been the case with the coronavirus pandemic. If your employees have been put into a position where business activities have been disrupted, video can help provide a quick directive for what to work on, and the expectations around timelines and deliverables. 

Create a “Single Source of Truth”


Not only does providing clear, concise executive and team lead video communication get everyone on the same page, storing that information in a central location should also be part of your crisis strategy. By providing employees with a central repository for updates, key information is accessible to everyone at any time, regardless of location or time zone. This is easily accomplished with a portal like CircleHD, where assets are created, stored, organized and easily captured for posterity. 

Encourage Employee Collaboration


Even when you’re not dealing with a crisis, video is still one of the most effective tools your company can use to call employees to action. A Gallup survey revealed that only 30 percent of full-time employees in the United States feel engaged at work. There is no doubt that this number gets amplified during times of unrest at work. This is why looking for alternative avenues of collaboration are so important and why video can support in a big way. 

Encourage your workforce to create content like: 

  • Tips the department can use
  • A problem they are working on and how they solved it
  • Fun content that shows their office or workspace if telecommuting
  • How they are spending their day

Employees are often a company’s most effective storytellers and an under-utilized content resource. Not only can you build team connections through effective video exercises, but it can also become good material for your marketing department to use externally.

Implementation and Best Practices


For video to become a natural part of your business continuity plan, you should employ the use of an enterprise video platform that can seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack (we’re biased, but CircleHD is a great choice). These features are particularly important:

  • Enterprise-grade security: You’ll likely be sharing sensitive information, so your platform needs to incorporate the latest security protocols to keep communication from getting leaked. 
  • Access controls: The capability to restrict viewing to specific groups, teams, and individuals should be available. 
  • Mobile-friendly: Information should be readily available, allowing your employees to access the most up-to-date information at any time, from anywhere, regardless of if they have wifi access or not.
  • Analytics: Communication managers should have access to an extensive analytics suite that gives them insight into who is watching content, what they are watching and when. Utilizing these data points can also let you know who has seen your videos and who still needs to be informed. 

Of course, there’s still this prevailing idea that creating video content is difficult or requires costly investment. With all the advances in technology, that adage is no longer true. Today’s enterprise video platforms are both easy to use and integrate seamlessly into existing infrastructure–whether your company has a dedicated media room, or you’re just using the built-in audio/video features on your computer. 

More than any other type of corporate communication, your crisis messaging requires a high level of credibility and engagement that can only be produced by video content. People are 20 times more likely to retain information in the form of a story and video engages in a way that is not possible with text or still images, allowing you to convey the right message, to the right persons, at the right time. 


How to Engage Your Employees and Salesforce During a Pandemic

There’s no doubt that the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has turned the world upside down. From quarantined cities to a run on basic hygiene items, school closures, and beyond, it seems there isn’t one person who hasn’t been touched by the outbreak in some way. 

Global tech giants like Twitter, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have advised their employees to work remotely, a tactic that’s being replicated by companies large and small across the globe. And while telecommuting has steadily been on the rise for the last few years, the pandemic may serve as a trigger for the greatest remote-working experiment ever conducted. 

For some workers, telecommuting can be a logistical nightmare. But it doesn’t have to be. By having the proper tech infrastructure in place, working from home can benefit both employees and employers. 

Setting Up a Tech Infrastructure That Works


The best time to set up a contingency plan is before you need it. Of course, now that the pandemic has drastically escalated over the last week, that time has passed and businesses need to act now. 

The first step to setting up any successful remote collaboration is to ensure your tech stack is up to snuff. You’ll need to figure out which everyday processes can be digitally replicated using the proper tools. For example, Zoom and WebEx, who have made their platform free during this time, are great ways to facilitate face-to-face interactions and meetings without having to be in the same room as your team. Some other programs you may want to consider for use at your company include:

  • Google Docs + Google Drive, which offers real-time collaboration, doc sharing, and storage
  • Slack is a great productivity app that is for just more than chatting. Not only does it cut down on emails, but its endless array of integrations (including with CircleHD) will help your employees keep up with projects and feedback from anywhere. Hot tip: As a distributed team ourselves, we’re also big fans of the Giphy integration, which helps the team express humor and emotions. 
  • Github is the ultimate tool for developers to host their code online. Even if you’re not a developer, it’s a great choice for a company wiki. 
  • Project management apps like Asana and Basecamp work well for remote teams because of all the options available to manage projects and track tasks

Secure Your Communications


Even if you’re using some of the above programs to fuel your organization’s productivity, you’ll also want to make sure you have a central, secure portal where sensitive information can be hosted away from prying eyes and malicious actors. Companies often try to achieve this through a corporate VPN (virtual private network), but they can be notoriously difficult to set up and can add a lot of stress on your team’s network connections. While VPN technology has come a long way, administering various network privileges is a cumbersome chore at best and will likely not provide you with nearly enough protection in the rapidly-changing cyber threat landscape.

Access permissions for content can create additional security concerns for enterprises. After all, you want to be sure that sensitive information isn’t leaked and is only being shared with your intended recipients. You should always train employees on how to detect and handle phishing attacks and confirm any information being stored or shared is encrypted in transit and at rest. 

Since we live in a time when companies need to be extra-vigilant about mitigating cyber threats, superior security protocols are at the heart of what we’ve built at CircleHD. We host your content in the Amazon cloud, which is a SOC-1 security facility so you can rest easy knowing that content is stored responsibly and served only with whom you permit using AES 256-bit encryption.


Engage Your Workforce From Anywhere


Chances are if your team is suddenly distributed, you’re looking for ways to continue to propel employee engagement and foster connections.  Here are a few ways you can use a portal like CircleHD for internal use at your organization:

Provide a central repository for company communications, announcements, and onboarding modules

Whether you make telecommuting a cornerstone of your organization’s work policy, or you’re responding to the coronavirus pandemic by incorporating it for the moment, it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page and that there is a “single source of truth” for all company information. This can be easily accomplished with a portal where company assets are created, stored, and organized so teams can access them on demand. 

You might be thinking that many organizations have a company intranet that usually serves this purpose, and you’d be correct. However, these legacy systems are increasingly becoming outdated due to irrelevant and outdated content, poor organization, ineffective search capabilities, complicated UX, and a lack of native video support and mission-critical mobile optimizations. So it’s easy to see why an intranet may not be the best business communication tool.

Not only is CircleHD easy to use on desktop, but it’s also incredibly mobile-friendly, with native apps you can share with your team that allows them to access company content from anywhere at any time, even if there’s no wifi connection.

Record, store and share department and all-hands meetings

When teams work remotely, it’s imperative that they communicate more. Whether you’re utilizing on-demand messaging programs like Slack, a web conferencing tool like Zoom, or a platform that allows you to natively record video, adding all of this content into a central location can make it easy to access and refer to at a later date. It also is a great way to give everyone in your organization to attend the meetings at a time that is convenient for them, regardless of timezone or locale. 

Amplify executive to employee communications

In a time of crisis, it’s important that information flow from the top to the workforce as smoothly as possible. Obviously, this can be accomplished through an email or a message that is stored in your hub but seeing a member of the exec team on video can be incredibly powerful. Not only does it lend a human face to the crisis, but it also helps build employee trust and the credibility of the organization. 

The numbers don’t lie: According to a recent study, 76 percent of companies who used video found improved communications among remote employees, while 58 percent of companies found “increased alignment with company and organizational goals.”

Of course, this method is still incredibly effective when you’re not dealing with a pandemic. Video is one of the most effective tools for leaders. The best executive videos aren’t just a way to share what’s going on in the company, they’re a way to call people to action. 

Build an inclusive culture when all employees contribute

According to a recent Gallup poll, only 30 percent of full-time employees in the United States feel engaged or inspired at work. The study continues, “These employees are emotionally disconnected from their companies and may actually be working against their employers’ interests; they are less productive, are more likely to steal from their companies, negatively influence their coworkers, miss workdays, and drive customers away.”

Building a company culture that gets your workers excited should already be top of mind for any organization but the hurdles can seem insurmountable when your team is distributed. How do you encourage engagement when physical presence isn’t possible? After all, video conferencing and chatting to each other can only get you so far.

One solution is to build a video library where all your team members can upload and contribute their own content, such as:

  • Tips the department can use
  • A use case they are working on and how they solved the problem
  • Fun content that shows their office or workspace
  • How they are spending their day

Employees are often a company’s most effective storytellers and an under-utilized content resource. Not only can you build team connections through effective video exercises, but it can also become good fodder for your marketing department to use externally.

Encourage on-the-job training and continuous learning

Coronavirus has upended day-to-day operations for many companies. Even if your team is telecommuting, it’s likely not everything is going to be “business as usual”. For example, if your team relies heavily on calling potential customers, you’re not going to get as much traction if everyone in your target market is also out of the office and not answering their regular phone calls. 

That doesn’t mean all productivity needs to go out the window. Times like this are a great opportunity to reskill your workforce or offer additional learning opportunities. CircleHD helps you quickly put together a complete training module with your existing media.

Don’t have as much information as you’d like and need more content? Our platform has native video and podcast recording capabilities which can help you greatly reduce the time it would take to create courses using a traditional learning management system (LMS).

You can also assess how well knowledge is being retained and understood by creating quizzes and certifications for your workforce. 

Hot tip: Not all training needs to have extreme detail or be comprehensive. Nor is the human brain wired to pay attention for hours on end. Consider creating some bite-sized, or “micro-learning”, content that learners can take at their own pace. 

How to Engage Your Salesforce During a Pandemic


People are currently adapting and taking extra precautions to keep COVID-19 at bay. So too should your reps be flexible and agile at this time. There are several strategies you can employ to cope with the business impact of COVID-19 and keep the sales team functioning properly.

Bring marketing and sales together for better collaboration

If the virus has left you with a little bit of extra time on your hands, it’s a great time to take a step back and think about how your team is collaborating with marketing, and vice versa. Oftentimes, the two teams work in silos which can have some pretty awful effects on your bottom line. Case in point: Hubspot found when sales and marketing teams work together, companies see 36 percent higher customer retention and 38 percent higher sales win rates.

Sounds pretty great, right?  But how can you put that into something that is actionable? We recommend using CircleHD to create a central portal for sales and marketing to share things like:

  • Product demo videos
  • Content that can be shared with clients and prospects
  • Product sheets and updates
  • Notes from prospect and client conversations that can help marketing tailor their messaging in a way that helps sales win more business

    Look for new ways to engage your reps


    While many reps are used to telecommuting in some fashion, you want to make sure you’re taking every step necessary to keep them motivated during this quarantine period. Some content you should consider for your team might include:
  • Share winning stories: It’s not enough to know why a customer’s business was won, it’s also important to discuss how
  • Motivational talks: We’ve heard about leaders in the CircleHD community who do a quick pep-talk every morning to get their team excited about selling and, maybe we’re biased, but we think it’s a brilliant idea
  • Quote of the day: Similar to motivational talks, you can make a short video discussing why this thought is important and how it should inspire your salesforce to do great things
  • Recognition videos to call out reps who are crushing it
  • News and trends happening in your industry that may affect the way sales reps approach certain customers or products
  • A team podcast that reps can access from anywhere 

The good news is that quarantines don’t last forever and these motivational pieces can be used long after the chaos has passed.

Encourage the development of skills and tactics

There’s never been a better time to brush up on your sales skills than now. After all, what may have been effective yesterday doesn’t always work today. And since sales is moving faster than ever before, it’s more important than ever your team keeps their techniques fresh. 

By using a secure training system like CircleHD you can:

  • Put together modules and tracks that can support ongoing sales coaching and onboarding efforts 
  • Create on-demand training employees can browse and access, just like Netflix
  • Enable learning on-the-go (or, in the case of coronavirus, while doing other things around the house)
  • Set up role-playing scenarios that help your reps hone their negotiation skills
  • Create quizzes to facilitate knowledge retention
  • Play into your reps natural competitive instincts and set up a team leaderboard to encourage engagement

    Provide resources for virtual client meetings


    If there was ever a time to get creative with your sales prospecting and presentations, now is it. Coronavirus is forcing lots of businesses to cut down on travel and in-person meetings, which means web presentations and digital assets are more important than ever. This may require you to change the way your sales process works. There are many ways you can supplement an in-person meeting if your potential new client is working from home, including:
  • Giving them a virtual tour over FaceTime or a web conferencing application
  • Creating a pitch video you can share with prospects and leads
  • Putting together a video of your product or solution so your prospect can see it in action
  • Share some supplemental material the marketing department has put together to make a business case for your product and company knowledge

Just because you’re not able to meet in person, doesn’t mean you have to stop doing business. Deals may get stalled in your pipeline so it’s up to you to keep them warm. Keep checking on your leads and continue to offer them things of value. They may not be willing to make an investment until the storm passes but recognize that this is temporary. 

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No matter where your teams are working from, it’s crucial that leaders don’t succumb to the panic.  Remain calm, be intentional about communications, put the proper tools and processes in place, and you’ll create a winning engagement strategy that survives long after this pandemic has passed. 


CircleHD Makes Platform Free for K-12 Educators Affected By Coronavirus

Platform easily integrates with already in-use technology like Zoom for a more seamless learning experience

March 16, 2020 – SAN FRANCISCO, CA – CircleHD, a Bay-area based company known for its highly-secure, learning experience platform (LXP), has just announced that it will make its solution free to any K-12 teacher or educational institution that has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe.

“The spread of coronavirus has caused my son’s school to close until mid-April and they don’t have any e-learning resources available,” says CircleHD’s Chief Executive Officer, Santosh Sahoo. “We wanted to make CircleHD available to any other individuals or institutions also experiencing a shut down so they can continue doing the incredible educational work they do every single day with minimal interruption.”

CircleHD’s LXP enables users to use a combination of video, audio, and slide deck content to easily create class modules that can be accessed on desktop or mobile, 24/7, from anywhere–even where there is no wifi connection. The platform integrates with Zoom, which many educators have turned to during the outbreak, and features powerful analytics tools that track key metrics like which content is being accessed, when it’s being accessed, and overall student progress. Teachers are also able to create and assign quizzes in order to gain a better understanding of how well knowledge is being absorbed and retained. 

In addition to the aforementioned, CircleHD’s Learning Experience Platform also contains a catalog of tech-forward features that can help instructors get more from their educational content including:

  • Ability to target and restrict learning modules to specific people
  • Automatic transcription which enables content to be transcribed and close-captioned at the point of creation
  • AI-powered search to identify where specific terms and phrases occur in your content library
  • iOS and Android mobile apps allow users to access content on-demand

Sahoo finishes, “With schools from coast to coast shut down to prevent the spread of coronavirus, we hope CircleHD will be a useful tool to mitigate downtime and help educators continue to effectively conduct classes in these uncertain times.”

The company has asked any teachers or institutions wishing to use their platform to reach out directly to sales@circlehd.com

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ABOUT CIRCLEHD

CircleHD is an Enterprise Learning Experience Platform founded by Santosh Sahoo and Vinay Ubale in Bellevue, Washington. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, CircleHD brings enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance to company videos, presentations, and podcasts. 


Crafting a Business Crisis Plan for COVID-19 and Beyond

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has had an unprecedented impact on global communities and businesses. From the cancellation of major events like SXSW, E3, and Collision Conference, to disrupted supply chains, not a corner of the world has been untouched by the mysterious disease. So it’s no surprise that organizations are working to create contingency plans in the event a serious disruption to their operations takes place.

The best time to prepare a business crisis plan is before you need it. Even when there isn’t a virus spreading, other emergencies may necessitate the need for your employees to change the way they work. If your organization is one of the 51% that don’t have procedures in place, there are steps you can take to keep your business activities as uninterrupted as possible. 

Come Together


When putting together any crisis plan, it’s important to form a task force to determine everyone’s roles and responsibilities. Depending on your business, it may include representatives from key areas like human resources, communications, sales, supply chain, health, safety, operations, and legal. Decide which person on your team is the ultimate decision-making authority and who is responsible for communicating pertinent information about the company’s situation with employees and external audiences like media and customers. 

Assess Your Risk


The first component of any effective business crisis plan is risk assessment, which identifies potential hazards that could disrupt your business functions and processes. While pandemic is certainly top-of-mind right now, other vulnerabilities may include public relations blunders, social media missteps, cyberattacks, data breaches, natural disasters, or product recalls.

Determine the Impact on Your Business


Newton’s third law of physics states that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”, which is something all companies should keep in mind when developing a business crisis plan. In order to think clearly and make timely, well-informed decisions during the chaos, you should pre-emptively perform a business impact analysis (BIA). This will help your team consider every angle of a threat, revealing a litany of potential effects, such as:

  • Customer dissatisfaction
  • Lost or delayed sales
  • Increased expenses
  • Reputation damage
  • Regulatory fines
  • Legal ramifications

Put Contingencies In Place


Once you’ve identified the risks that could impact your business, it’s time to put actions in place that will help your company respond effectively to each scenario. Think about what steps and safeguards should be in place to resolve each crisis, what resources would be required, and how your team can help. 

For example, a social media misfire might result in your digital team issuing a statement across your online channels while customer teams are briefed on any official statements to relay. On the flip side, a product recall would require coordination across IT, customer service, sales, and public relations to minimize any impact on the company’s reputation. 

Create a Communications Plan


During times of crisis, it’s essential that critical information is communicated quickly and consistently across your various audiences. Your task force will need to agree on what information should be available publicly and what should be kept internal. We recommend putting messaging protocols in place ahead of time in order to expedite the approval of any company statements and prevent everyone from getting suffocated by endless editing. Be sure to consider if legal input will be needed. 

Review the audiences you will need to reach out to and assess what kind of communication they will need, as well as how you will deliver it. Will you send an email or a text? Do some audiences respond better to certain forms of communication over another? No matter which methods you use, it’s important to test your systems and tools ahead of time and make certain the tone in your messaging comes across as calm, collected and reasoned.

You’ll also want to think about how any relevant correspondence will be distributed and how workers can get the most timely information possible. Some businesses will utilize email or a company intranet, but a platform like CircleHD is especially helpful in this instance because it securely delivers information only to the people or teams you grant access to, cutting down on the chance that sensitive information could be leaked. CircleHD can also act as a central “hub” that gives your workforce access to the most up-to-date information available, at any time, even if there’s no internet connection available. 

Put Together an HR Plan


Perhaps one of the most striking effects of the COVID-19 outbreak has been the restriction on travel and working. Telecommuting (aka “remote work”), or the practice of working outside of the formal office, has been steadily gaining popularity over the last few years, buoyed by a host of digital productivity and collaboration tools like Zoom and Slack

According to FlexJobs, “Between 2005 to 2017, there was a 159% increase in remote work. In 2015, 3.9 million U.S. workers were working remotely. Today that number is at 4.7 million, or 3.4% of the population.” 

Despite the transformative possibilities of remote work, many companies have yet to put any formal procedures in place. The recent wave of coronavirus-related shutdowns should remind organizations why it’s imperative to implement and/or review their telecommuting policies. 

Equally as important, made prominent by the United States’ recently announced travel suspensions, your business crisis plan should include guidance about what happens in the event employees are prevented from leaving or returning home. 

Effective Communication is Key


In times of crisis, the way you communicate with your workforce and customers can make or break your reputation. It’s important to be direct, to the point, and as transparent as possible. Whether the incident is minor or, as in the case of COVID-19, a source of ongoing concern, providing frequent updates and outlining what precautions you are taking will reassure everyone involved. 

Make Your Plan Future-Proof


There’s a good chance that activating your crisis management plan won’t just be a “one and done” situation so it’s vital the plan remains updated and frequently updated to reflect the incorporation of new technologies, personnel turnover, and other variable changes. 



Recommendations for an Infectious Disease Outbreak Response Plan


With a seemingly endless stream of coronavirus developments unfolding hour to hour, it’s imperative that businesses have their infectious disease outbreak plan ready to go at any time. According to the CDC, employers should:

  • Ensure the plan is flexible and involve your employees in developing and reviewing your plan.
  • Conduct a focused discussion or exercise using your plan, to find out ahead of time whether the plan has gaps or problems that need to be corrected.

  • Share your plan with employees and explain what human resources policies, workplace and leave flexibilities, and pay and benefits will be available to them.

  • Share best practices with other businesses in your communities (especially those in your supply chain), chambers of commerce, and associations to improve community response efforts.

What You Should Include in a Coronavirus Response Plan:


  • Identify possible work-related exposure and health risks to your employees

  • Review human resources policies to make sure that policies and practices are consistent with public health recommendations and are consistent with existing state and federal workplace laws

  • Explore whether you can establish policies and practices, such as flexible worksites (e.g., telecommuting) and flexible work hours (e.g., staggered shifts), to increase the physical distance among employees 

  • For employees who are able to work remotely, managers should encourage employees to do so until symptoms are completely resolved. 

  • Ensure that you have the information technology and infrastructure needed to support multiple employees who may be able to work from home.

  • Identify essential business functions, essential jobs or roles, and critical elements within your supply chains (e.g., raw materials, suppliers, subcontractor services/products, and logistics) required to maintain business operations. 

  • Plan for how your business will operate if there is increasing absenteeism or these supply chains are interrupted.

  • Set up authorities, triggers, and procedures for activating and terminating the company’s infectious disease outbreak response plan, altering business operations (e.g., possibly changing or closing operations in affected areas), and transferring business knowledge to key employees. Work closely with your local health officials to identify these triggers.

  • Plan to minimize exposure between employees and also between employees and the public, if public health officials call for social distancing.

  • Establish a process to communicate information to employees and business partners on your infectious disease outbreak response plans and latest COVID-19 information. Anticipate employee fear, anxiety, rumors, and misinformation, and plan communications accordingly.

  • In some communities, early childhood programs and K-12 schools may be dismissed, particularly if COVID-19 worsens. Determine how you will operate if absenteeism spikes from increases in sick employees, those who stay home to care for sick family members, and those who must stay home to watch their children if dismissed from school. Businesses and other employers should prepare to institute flexible workplace and leave policies for these employees.

  • Local conditions will influence the decisions that public health officials make regarding community-level strategies; employers should take the time now to learn about plans in place in each community where they have a business.

  • If there is evidence of a COVID-19 outbreak in the US, consider canceling non-essential business travel to additional countries per travel guidance on the CDC website.
  • Travel restrictions may be enacted by other countries which may limit the ability of employees to return home if they become sick while on travel status.

  • Consider canceling large work-related meetings or events.

At the end of the day, any business crisis is a test of resilience, agility and cross-departmental communication. By having an adequate business crisis plan in place, your organization will be better prepared to face the unexpected and recover more quickly. 


If you’d like to learn more about business crisis plans and how CircleHD can enhance your plan of action, please reach out.