How has your company been impacted by concerns over the coronavirus–or the virus itself if a worker or client has been stricken–in terms of business, your staff, client relationships?
We have been lucky so far, no one has been diagnosed with the virus. We have had some staff not feel well but there have been no fevers or confirmed cases. I have been in contact with many clients and they seem to be fine as well. I am sure it is a matter of time before this nightmare hits home, I hope everyone stays healthy.
The well-being, health and safety of people is clearly top priority. What measures have you taken to protect your staff and collaborators during this challenging time?
We have all our artists and technical staff working from home. We are interacting with our clients through remote technology and it has been going well. We continue to sanitize our building and we are doing regular communications with our staff, giving constant updates and reports on the health of the staff. We try to maintain as open and free flowing dialogue as possible to keep some sense of normalcy. We report good news too, one of our staff just had a baby!
How have you adapted your behavior, practices, policies, approaches, ways of thinking and doing business in response to the pandemic?
Yes, first and foremost is the health and safety of the clients and staff. Everything we do is oriented to that. In many ways we are making it up as we go along, we have never been in this position before, there was 9/11 and Sandy but they had a finite time frame, this can go on for some time so we adapt our policies and look for ways to keep everyone safe and informed.
Were you in the midst of a particular project when the coronavirus outbreak hit and how did you manage to deal with that situation?
Yes we had quite a few things going on as the crisis hit. We were following the situations in China and Italy closely and we realized we needed to be ready to go remote very quickly. We set up everything over a weekend and were ready to continue to work Monday morning from remote locations. It was a massive effort and the team was amazing in their dedication and diligence. We moved without a hitch.
What’s your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience dealing with coronavirus concerns thus far?
The biggest takeaway is that you have to plan ahead and be prepared to move quickly. Listen to all of your staff because they know their areas better than anyone, a unified team can accomplish anything. Things can change in an instant and it is often out of your control. Who could have foreseen the collapse of the industry like this? You have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
What advice, if any, would you offer to your counterparts at other companies/agencies, your clients and collaborators?
Think of the employees and clients health over the bottom line for the moment. We are going to go through one of the roughest most challenging times our industry has ever seen. If we can get through the next few months it will bounce back and be busier than ever but we have to get through it first. Also let’s learn from all this remote work, it is the future of our business. Let’s also work together as an industry, put aside our competitive edge and help each other.
Contingency plans have been prepared by many in light of the situation. Please share any aspects of those plans or tell us how your short and long-term business plans have been affected.
Very simple at the moment, short term business plan survive. Long term plan, learn from this experience, use it to grow the business in new and exciting ways.
It’s said that strength emerges from adversity. Do you see any silver lining or positive dynamic emerging for our industry/marketplace from this global health crisis?
Yes, I think we will come out of this closer, I think we will appreciate the communal workspace again, I think we will be razor focused on the best way to service our clients and we will be a lot more efficient in our workflows. Remote operations will free up real estate and change the way we do business.
