Back to Business: The Very First Steps

The numbers suggest COVID-19 is easing its pandemic grip on the U.S., and with states lifting restrictions on business activity, tens of thousands of business owners will be trying to come up with their own answers to a shared question: Now what?

While unknown thousands have gone under for good, those who are opening their doors do so in a business world that has been reborn out of public-health concern. Job One, even before repatriating workers set up in remote locations, will entail getting their facilities into compliance with a huge list of COVID-related concerns.

It will be important for each to set individualized parameters specific to the type of business, the numbers of employees, and the kind of customer traffic they have been used to in the past. But it’s important going in, says Jeff Oddo, CEO of City Wide Maintenance, that they fully understand the limits of workplace sanitation, as well as the difference between sanitary and merely clean.

“You could spend lot of money sanitizing your entire facility every single day, and you would have a perfectly clean, 100 percent sanitized building,” Oddo says. “But as soon as one person walks into your space and coughs or sneezes, or even has a fever, your building is contaminated again.”

Clearly, no owner has a budget that covers front-to-back building sanitation every 24 hours, Oddo notes.
“If money has to come out of the budget now, what do you give up to invest more money in sanitizing?,” he said. “It’s not affordable or realistic to expect can you can sanitize every day. I’m in the business of that, and could do it at cost, but even I can’t do it every day.”

But the fear among customers and employees alike will be walking back through the door with them, and must be addressed, he said.

As a general rule, he suggests that owners convene their management teams to determine what a safe environment must look like, and assess the steps and costs needed to get there. The overall goal, though, is as much about reassuring employees of your concern for their safety as anything else. And companies large enough to have cleaning-service contracts need to review those to determine whether functions like coffee-area sanitation or doorknob cleaning haven’t been pared from project scope over the years as owners looked to cut costs.

City Wide, he said, is drawing on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which maintains a robust set of how-to instructions for businesses at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-small-business.html.

Those practices will be vitally important to companies in the Kansas City area that are navigating separate state sanctions on business activity. While some restrictions are easing, others will remain in place for weeks.

In Missouri, the order from Randall Williams, director of Health and Senior Services, is in place through May 31. It calls for use of social distancing’s six-foot rule at all business settings, or use of additional precautions when that distance can’t be maintained. It also prohibits most visits to senior-care facilities, and sets limits on building occupancy for retail establishments: 25 percent of maximum occupancy for buildings of less than 10,000 square feet, and 10 percent of maximum occupancy for those over that size.

Kansas entered Phase II of its reopening plan this week, with Gov. Laura Kelly issuing a detailed six-page executive order that allows most businesses to open. Among other things, it requires barriers between restaurant tables, and limits gatherings to 15 people. Bars and nightclubs are to remain closed, but hair and nail salons can operate only by appointment or on-line booking, with walk-ins prohibited until further order.

Whatever approach owners take, Oddo said, “a lot of it is about the perception of your staff, to make sure they know you’re concerned about their safety and that you’re investing in it.”

Editor’s Note: ReOpen KC is a digital newsletter feature Ingram’s will produce to help owners think through and execute their unique operating strategies as states lift restrictions on business activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please send any thoughts or suggestions for content to Editorial@Ingrams.com