For some big industries like aviation, food, tourism, among others COVID-19 has been a big turnaround in how to do business and keep adding value to customers while maintaining high quality and safety standards. At FieldCore safety and quality have always been the two primary pillars on which we base our business on, but the current environment and processes have pushed us to be even more critical about our own “proven methods” challenging the status quo of our industry to keep our employees safe and sound.
We constantly hear and read in literature that great leaders embrace change, and this is a perfect moment for us to act and promote the influence model to keep “flattening the curve” globally and in Latin America specifically. Influence model suggests that for a change to be carried out under optimal conditions it must influence a series of attitude changes in the workforce which are summarized in 4 blocks described below.
We all know that it is not easy to change the behavior and well-established processes, to quickly optimize them to the standards that the current health crisis requires. So, in light to all the behavioral changes that COVID-19 brought such as social distancing, the use of face masks, confinement/lock downs among many others, I want to encourage you to use these four blocks that might help you and our organizations to manage change as effectively as possible.
· Fostering understanding and conviction: Let’s take the use of facemasks as an example. At FieldCore Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is part of the industry norm so adapting to using them was not a huge change for us, but it might be for other industries. Keep your employees confident and onboard by providing important information such as the benefits that using a facemask has for them and for the business.
· Developing talent and skills: Since COVID-19 affected our communities and workplaces with no advance warning, this topic is the toughest to implement. We didn’t have time to adopt and teach any of the new behaviors. That is why reinforcing changes goes hand in hand with building knowledge and awareness.
· Reinforcing changes through formal mechanisms: It can be as simple as hanging posters at the workplace, constant email communications or starting with a safety talk related to COVID-19 during every meeting (remote or face to face).
· Role modeling the new behavior: Like the phrase says, “do the talking”. If you as a leader do not embrace the new behavior, don’t expect your team and colleagues to do it on their own. You must set an example.
Following these practices will help our organizations, companies and every one of us, representing various communities, to embrace these new behaviors, helping us to protect our most vulnerable population and to eventually decrease the number of cases, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed.
I would like to say a big thank you to our FieldCore employees and to our partners, customers and everyone that is out there performing their duties despite the associated risk. Your efforts continue powering the world, which in turn ensures safety and well-being of the communities we live in.
In memory of our friend and great colleague, Arturo Solis.
