Last week, leaders from the Seattle tech community joined a special GeekWire virtual roundtable for GeekWire members on how companies are coping with COVID-19. As the original U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, startups and tech giants in the region have been grappling with its impact for weeks while also preparing for an uncertain future.
The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the workforce in unprecedented ways. Its social and economic impacts are pushing organizations to think about contingency planning and pivot. Leaders are challenged to keep employees connected and morale high while personal and professional routines, including their own, are upended.
For GeekWire’s first-ever virtual event, co-founder John Cook was joined by panelists Mikaela Kiner, founder and CEO of HR consultancy Reverb; Britt Provost, EVP of people and culture at health tech company Accolade; Karl Siebrecht, co-founder and CEO of warehousing startup Flexe; and Kim Vu, head of diversity, equity and inclusion at mobile payments startup Remitly.
Watch the full video below and continue reading for five tips and takeaways from the panelists as they are adapt to the ever-evolving situation:
Communication, communication, communication
Top priority: “One of the most important, if not the most important principle that I fall back on is communication…I can’t emphasize enough the importance of if you think you’re communicating enough, you’re probably halfway home to what’s needed.” – Siebrecht
On balancing transparency and keeping a positive outlook: “Transparency doesn’t mean being 100% transparent about all things at all times so we still get to use judgement and discretion. One way I think of that is “who’s your audience?” Is what you’re sharing going to be helpful? And also, who has the means and maturity to deal with different messages at different levels?” – Kiner
Be ready to listen: “It’s not just the delivery of information, it’s also making sure those channels are open for questions and concerns. For a lot of folks, it’s not even that they’re expecting you to have an answer, they just want to be heard and acknowledged, there are anxieties and fears people are having and they are being seen and they are valued and we’ll get through it together.” – Vu
Don’t forget to communicate the good news: “If you are optimistic about your business or parts of your business coming out o.k., if people are going to have job security, it’s really important to communicate that. We focus a lot on communicating the hard news and the bad news.” – Kiner
Other actions the panelists are taking:
- Multiple standup meetings each week.
- Take time to go around to each individual and check-in before diving into business.
- Strongly encouraging video calls, not just audio to see people’s reactions and build relationships.
- Manage expectations about the frequency of communication. Always remember to circle back.
- Recognize that things aren’t normal so you don’t necessarily have to act or be normal.
Compassion for others and yourself
Skip saying “sorry”: “One of our new rules is not to say ‘sorry.’ Sorry for when kids are on the screen, pets are in the room, when people are taking breaks in the afternoon to check on their parents to make sure they’re o.k. And, to be honest, for some people that just need to take a little bit of a break.” – Provost
Childcare challenges: “Different age kids, present really different challenges when everyone is at home. Kids are at home, some have online school and others don’t have online school. And recognizing too, the impact that has on us. It’s not just that, ‘oh, we’re home and working forty hours a week. There’s a lot more interruption, a lot more distraction and a lot more people who need our time.” -Kiner
Rethinking work: “I think it’s changing how the way work is happening because we are thinking about the whole human and the family in a different way, partly because they can be on screen.” – Provost
Face the tough choices with compassion: “The hardest questions we are getting, of course, are about people and staffing costs. One thing I’m always grateful for this community is every conversation we’ve had about this whether it’s with business leaders, people leaders or employment attorneys is that they are coming at it with a lot of compassion.” – Kiner
Other actions the panelists are taking:
- We need to make sure we’re our best selves as we go through this.
- Consider shift differentials or alternative approaches to work so employees can be interrupted by kids.
- Be flexible and adaptable to individual employee’s needs.
- Practice what you encourage other people to do.
- Make sure to check-in with your counselor or coach more regularly than normal.
Keep track of the lessons learned in the moment
Prepare for the “new normal”: “While we’re in it and trying to work through it, there’s a lot of “how can we capture the learnings right now so when we’re back into the world of the ‘new normal’, what is that new workforce structure going to look like, what does that new environment for working look like for everyone. We are trying to be mindful about how do we capture those learnings along the way.” – Vu
Remembering lessons from the dotcom bust: “The leadership team there (at aQuantive) took clear and decisive action early and communicated very clearly and frequently with everybody. We went through a lot of hard times but people came out of that still feeling really well tethered and tied to the culture, feeling very positive about the company. Those are lessons I learned on the job there, that certainly stay with me today.” – Siebrecht
Everyone is learning: “We don’t have all the answers and everybody is trying to do their best. In the spirit of transparency, having the dialogue and ‘I don’t know’ may be the comment right now.” – Provost
The benefits of hitting the brakes: “We’ve all seen what it looks and feels like to slow down a little bit and there’s some goodness in that. I think people might want to keep a piece of that even when they go back to work.” – Kiner
Other actions the panelists are taking: Create new documents to capture learnings in the moment.
Encourage community
Make a statement: “Setting that tone that we live here, we belong, we’re going to take care of this community, has also really calmed a lot of the edges around the organization.” – Provost
There’s more sharing: “The fact that people are being forced to connect and forced to share some humor has been really healthy and definitely something we’ll take forward.” – Kiner
Getting to know one another: “We’re getting different insight into people, how they live and who they are.” – Provost
Consider what others are experiencing: “What’s the changing environment for our customers? What are their needs right now outside of our product? So that we can really understand what is going to be the best use case to serve our customers during this time.” – Vu
Encourage philanthropy: “They found an organization locally that could use some help and ran an internal drive…we don’t have a lot of cash to put in but we had budget and put that forward. The company matched us in thirty-two minutes. It was a fun way to get people together and build community, people can shine.” – Siebrecht
Other actions the panelists are taking:
- Organizing fun team activities such as virtual breakfasts, lunches, happy hours or small group coffee conversations.
- Find ways for people who wouldn’t normally interact within the organization to co-mingle.
- Make senior leaders available, joining virtual hangouts or hosting weekly fireside chats.
- Connect with colleagues around shared interests like exercise or knitting, like “Reknitly.”
- Include kids, pets and spouses in virtual hangouts.
Plan ahead and have hope
Go back to your business plan: “Look for opportunities to create optionality, if there’s money you were going to spend next week that you could delay four weeks, there’s a lot of optionality in that, particularly if it doesn’t have an impact on whatever you were spending it for.” – Siebrecht
Consider creative solutions to reduce staff cost: “Some folks will have to do actual reductions and layoffs in which case we want to think about how much notice can you give people, can you give them severance, can you pay for their continuation of benefits for a period of time. What are all the things you can do to support them as best you can?” – Kiner
The opportunity for innovation: “It’s in moments like these where the normal ways of doing things aren’t done so we have to lean on new innovations and low and behold some of these new innovations work really well.” – Siebrecht
“I’m really excited not only just for telemedicine but just the innovations that will come out of this across different sectors.” – Vu
Look to others for inspiration: “This community reaffirms my faith in where we live, who we are, how we’re doing things. It’s not easy right now but I see so many moments of grace and beauty, how we’re coming together.” – Provost
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