Prepare for COVID-19 (coronavirus) with a continuity plan (our experience)

🦠 COVID19 Response
1

I’m located in Seattle, which is a COVID-19 hotspot in the U.S. Since we’re among the earliest affected areas in the country, I wanted to share our experience in case it is helpful for your preparations.

Last week, we developed a Continuity of Operations Plan. This is helpful in two ways. First, it made us think about what our plan for several possible scenarios; and second, our plan can be shared with our community, who is now informed what will happen and how they can help in those scenarios.

Scenarios we planned for include:
• A member is confirmed sick with COVID-19
• Someone exhibits symptoms in the space
• A staff member is unavailable or quarantined
• All staff are unavailable
• Public schools are closed

Operational changes we planned for include:
• Intensify regular cleanings
• Deep clean/sanitize, if/when called for
• Limited hours or operations
• Partial or full closure
• Who in the community can be recruited to assist if staff is not available.

We used this document from our county health department to help us, which I recommend.

Hopefully we won’t have to rely on our continuity plan, but I’m glad we made it and are prepared. I hope this can help others as well.

If you have anything else that would help plan for business disruption due to pandemic, I’d love to hear. Stay healthy!

3 Likes
2

Thanks for sharing Mike. As a smaller operator we often don’t even think about contingency plans let alone draft them! This is a good framework to draft from.

1 Like
3

That information is extremely helpful. We are in NY near a community with many confirmed cases. Thanks!!

4

Thanks Mike for sharing this plan!
Stay safe and healthy.

5

Thank you for sharing!

6

Thanks Mike, our area has had it’s first cases this week and the need to prepare is feeling more urgent by the hour.

7

Thanks so much for sharing this, @Mike_Morita. I’m sure I’m not alone in the past few days being full of new challenges and concerns.

I thought that some people might find our community response helpful to read, which includes:

  1. our unchanging emphasis on community
  2. our plans for moving even more activity online (we already have a robust online community, this is just doubling down)
  3. our plans to implement day pass rollovers

We’ve also had members express interest in prepaying memberships to help weather any cash flow issues, and are considering a punch card sale to allow people to pre-purchase day passes at a discount that can be used later.

Our plan is to get AHEAD of people considering a membership change or cancellation and so far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Anyway, here’s the post we shared internally: https://www.indyhall.org/posts/15586-our-covid-19-response-and-planning/