This is an excellent video put out by the Event Safety Allliance on March 4th, 2020. It provides guidance on 8 things to do right now to sustain your cultural organization or business and keep your staff and patrons safe.
8 things:
- Develop a business continuity plan that covers mass gatherings, following local government guidance. This plan should include pre-outbreak planning, plans for when the threat is present but not local, and what to do when the threat is local, and post-event evaluation and revision of the plan.
- Categorize employees and tasks which are mission critical, who has time-sensitive projects, and who can or cannot work remotely
- Consider moving elderly or immune-compromised staff or volunteers away from public-facing jobs
- Delineate remote work and how to do it. Maybe now is the time for some long-postponed website or online catalog work?
- Create a flexible refund policy to encourage sick people not to attend events
- Create an emergency action plan if an event has to be canceled or if you have to close.
- Who to call? Phone tree
- Can event or exhibit be enjoyed remotely?
- What is your event cancellation insurance?
- Communicate with key stakeholders
- Develop a statement on what you plan to say about your actions, how you are going to handle social distancing, what your messaging will be around managing sick staff or patrons. There’s a great example of this at 37:01 on the video.
- Will you post a sign at the entrance requesting that sick people not attend events? Will you ask coughing, sneezing feverish people to leave to protect others?
- Create a culture of permission to call in sick and examine ability to increase paid time off.
- Create a situational awareness process
- Designate one person to monitor the situation by staying up-to-date on current information and vetting it’s accuracy through sources such as Johns Hopkins, CDC and WHO as well as local governance and staff/volunteer wellness and stress.
- Check supply chains
- Know where your supplies come from, identify which are critical and plan for what you will do if you cannot obtain them
- Promote good health habits
- Increase cleaning schedules and follow CDC guidelines
- Assessment of company travel policies
- Review business continuity plan for the long-term
- Ensure that IT department and infrastructure can handle increase in remote work
- Ensure that collections and building can be monitored for security and environmental changes
- Ensure staff and patron safety through social distancing procedures
- Inventory personal protection supplies
Beth Heller Conservation LLC 