Covid-19- Small Biz Prep – What To Do – Shut Down, Split Into 2, or Roll With The Punches?

OK, thought I’d ask the brains trust here for your thoughts as I'm going round in circles.

I own and run a pick-up and drop off domestic laundry service.

We have approx 1,500 regular customers from who we collect once every 2.2 weeks on average - about 700 pickups a week.

We have three vans and drivers.

We have about 20 employees – virtually all casuals, approx. 15 full time equivalents.

We work 5 days a week.

So far…

We have upped our cleaning and sanitising regime, added hygiene supplies, educated our staff and created a written response for customers regarding our response, which we currently provide on a reactive basis, i.e. when asked.

My mind is now turning to business disruption/continuity.

My understanding from what I can find online is that if a member of our staff is confirmed to have contracted the virus (which I believe will probably occur at some point in the future) then the following will happen:

All contacts that have either had 15 mins face to face contact or 2 hours contact in the same room will need to be tested, stay home and isolate for 14 days.

All our production staff are in the same open plan laundry – so this effectively means a shut down of or business for two weeks +.

I’ve considered the following alternatives:

A) Closing down for an indefinite period, until all this passes. I think this would be business suicide. We’d lose our staff, our customers and a pile of money servicing existing fixed o’heads for an unknown length of time.

B) Splitting the workforce into two ”teams”, each to process work 3 days a week, expanding our working week to 6 days. Then if a member of team A falls ill, only half our staff would be forced to quarantine and we could still service half our customer base and keep half our staff employed (unless/until a member of team B falls ill).

C) Splitting the workforce into 2 or more locations. Then we may have to only close one location at a time (this is just a more expensive and logistically complicated version of B).

D) Stay as we are and just roll with the punches. Close for two weeks each time we have an illness and our staff and customers will just have to understand.

The things that gets me about B, C and D is that the closures may happen multiple times as this runs its course?

As an extra complication we have no idea what will happen to demand over this period. So no decrease yet, but what’s around the corner?

Other alternatives? – What would you do to prepare?

 

Thanks Wyllie,
Yes, we are constantly repeating the wash hands msg. Posters going up etc.
Also constant surface cleaning throughout the day - plus contract cleans upped from 2/wk to 5/wk.
It's actually forced us to up our game re cleaning and simple things in the kitchen - like shared coffee and sugar tubs v's sachets, washing up (no dishwasher) v's disposable crockery/cutlery etc.
Now what I need to understand is how to keep as many staff employed they want and how to keep customers happy.

 

If you have the ability to disinfect the site so that the site can remain open but the staff go on the 14 day shutdown then I would:
1. split your workforce into 3 teams - I'll take the easy way and say 7 on a team but I know some people may work more hours than others but for this to work I'll assume everyone works the same hours
2. You keep running 5 days a week but have shifts, lets say 7-midday and 1-6pm with a clean in the hour in between.
3. Advertise now for additional casuals but don't employ anyone, just let them know you are advertising should one team go out of action.
4. Assign the teams to the shifts. Should one team go out of action you can then reassign your current 2 teams over the 3 teams and add in some new casuals who can be trained up by the experienced team members. Little to no disruption to capacity or workload

 

Thanks Westminster - see I knew it would be worth putting this out there.
Something to def have a look at.

 

Offer paid sick leave to your casuals for the remainder of the year.

 

Thanks TBW, how to support those off sick is certainly something we're investigating - and how can we use any gov't assistance to help. I'm also conscious that having a viable business to return to is important.