COVID has made every firm a safety business

In May of this year, I spotted and read an article from the World Economic Forum, WEF, ‘What hotels must learn from hospitals for the new reality of tourism’. I was immediately intrigued. This was, incidentally, around the same time that the tourism sector was in effective lockdown, with COVID-19 restrictive measures closing the ports and airports. So, reading anything that could assist with its safe reopening was of great interest. Tourism and hospitality, after all, (indirectly) represents some 34 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP, employing 120,000 people directly, and generating another 250,000 indirect jobs.

The article immediately struck me as having application wider than tourism. To put in mildly, COVID-19 has landed a tremendous body blow to the Jamaican economy, and tourism, in many respects, has taken the hardest hit. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, 14 of the 15 most tourism-dependent nations in the Americas are in the Caribbean, with Jamaica being one of them.

The premise of the article is centred on, in its own words “what the hospitality industry could learn from the hospital industry”. It establishes that hotels and hospitals face a daunting and similar task: re-establishing trust with the public after the initial closures intended to flatten the surge of COVID-19 cases. It goes without saying that a patient’s well-being is the primary concern of a hospital, and central to this is safety.

REIMAGINING BUSINESS

The article however, invites the reader to transfer this thinking not just to hospitals, but to hotels as well. Specifically, it invites hotels to consider reimagining their business. “Prior to COVID-19, you were a hotel company that had safety protocols. Today, you are a safety company that has hotels,” it advised.

This is not a far off or fanciful leap of the imagination. Both hospitals and hotels have the same root word, which, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, comes from the Latin noun hospes, which stands for “a guest or visitor”. Both provide lodging for guests or visitors. For both hospitals and hotels, the well-being and, therefore, safety of their hospes, or guests, are of paramount concern.

I, however, invite readers to go one step further to not just reimagine hotels as safety businesses, as important as this is to the Jamaican economy, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to reimagine all businesses as safety businesses. To echo the WEF article, with slight alteration, prior to COVID-19, you were a business that had safety protocols. Today, you are a safety business that provides goods and/or services. In fact, this could be taken even further by asking all Jamaican businesses not just to reimagine themselves as safety businesses, but to re-engineer themselves as safety businesses.

No matter the business, large or small, online or brick and mortar, they have hospes, or guests, be they customers, suppliers or members of the general public. All businesses, whether banks, taxi operators, lawyers, street and market vendors, food-processing facilities, corner shops – all the economic players in our economy, formal or informal – must reimagine and re-engineer themselves as safety businesses in order to combat COVID-19.

Even as vaccines are developed, we still have to learn to live with COVID. It will take time to inoculate everyone, as the logistics to manufacture, distribute and administer a vaccine globally are quite complex. How does can a company reimagine and re-engineer as a safety business? The WEF article outlines nine tips, and I have added a tenth.

Before we get into the tips, it is important that the re-engineering is approached with the right mindset.

Living with COVID-19, the new normal, means a reset to a resilience mindset.

BUSINESS SAFETY TIPS

1. The safety of employees comes first. This is the key, and holds all the other tips together. Employee safety must be top priority and has two critical aspects: what is done to keep workers safe and how those measures are communicated to staff.

2. Create an incident command centre. There should be regularly scheduled meetings with clear roles and responsibilities. The centre’s function is to have a clear response system in place for quick decision-making and information dissemination.

3. Training and retraining will be needed on how to manage the pandemic. This includes how to avoid contact with droplets from other people; customer service, even in the face of non-compliance with safety protocols; cleaning techniques etc.

4. Cleaning protocols. Following the protocol set out by the Ministry of Health and Wellness should be seen as a minimum standard, and opportunities should be sought to exceed them. This is also an opportunity to make cleanliness part of the business identity.

5. Invest in technology. Commerce is now done primarily to achieve low contact or no contact. This requires investment in technology.

6. Continue physical distancing. This is a critical containment measure in the pandemic. Have clear markers between workstations, in waiting areas, and at the points of sale or service.

7. Investigate the science of air filtration and aerosol transmission. Update and upgrade air-conditioning systems with a focus on air filtration.

8. Understand and track recommendations as they develop. Keeping abreast of developments associated with testing and treatment. This is important for business planning.

9. Communicate your commitment to a safe environment for customers and staff alike, and live up to those promises. The hotels and restaurants that deliver on safety will differentiate themselves quickly.

10. Finally, collaborate. This is my addition and I believe it is a fitting conclusion. In order to live with COVID-19 and shift to being safety businesses, we must remember the words of poet John Donne, that “ No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Ainsley Brown is senior director – regulations, policy, monitoring and enforcement at the Special Economic Zone Authority, and is an adjunct lecturer in logistics at the Mona School of Business and Management.