The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is causing concern around the world. We at Solita are also making our best to help minimise the effects of the virus to keep our people, customers and partners safe and sound, and our operations running. Below you will find a summary of the preventive measures Solita is taking.
Keeping our people safe
- Daily leadership and communication. We have set up a crisis communication team that is led by Solita’s CEO Jari Niska, which has been in effect since February 25th. The team reviews the latest developments daily, decides on the needed actions and communicates to Solita’s employees and partners frequently.
- Remote work. The Solita teams have been advised to work remotely and all meetings are held virtually, if possible. We are encouraging people to optimise their working conditions in remote offices by e.g. borrowing monitors and chairs from our offices. In addition, we recommend our crew to apply physical distancing by e.g. avoiding large crowds and public transportation, when possible. We have also established a discussion forum for remote working best practices.
- Avoiding events. We have asked our people to avoid travelling and postpone conference and customer work related traveling and opt for video conferencing when possible. Our people are advised to avoid taking part in large events. We have ceased organising physical events. Instead, we have provided people with instructions of how to organise workshops or similar digitally, and added remote access option to all meetings.
- Avoiding travelling. We are advising our people to currently avoid business travel and recommend avoiding leisure travel as well. Earlier, Solitans were advised to work remotely from home if they had been travelling in the most infected areas.
- Intensified level of office cleaning. Our offices cleaning services have been asked to increase and intensify the cleaning procedures. Disinfectants are offered to employees in lavatories and kitchens.
- Avoiding working and contacts when sick. We are encouraging our people to stay home if they have any respiratory symptoms, or their family member is sick, quarantined or has been traveling in the risky areas. We have temporarily extended the sick leave on self notice to five days, which also applies to situations where employees need to take care of a sick child.
- Enhanced personal hygiene and social distancing. We have emphasised the importance of precautionary measures, such as asked people to wash hands carefully and more than normally. Hand washing instructions have been added in lavatories and doorways. People are advised to avoid shaking hands and maintain physical distance to others. Currently we do not allow visitors at our offices, but are preferring remote meetings.
- Keeping partners informed. Solita’s partners have also been informed about our guidance on coronavirus situation on a regular basis.
- Guidelines. We are keeping our people constantly informed about the situation, and providing them with trustworthy information sources on coronavirus guidance, such as links to the guidance of public health authorities in all our operating countries. We have also advised our people about local hotlines and how to proceed, should someone suspect being infected.
- New safe office procedures. In May 2020, we are still recommending remote working, but Solitans can choose to work at the office if needed. The capacity of our offices has been limited by 50 percent to make sure working at the office is safe and allows physical distancing. We are applying zoning to minimise physical contacts of people working in different floors.
Keeping our operations running
Risk management.
Since early March we have started an enhanced risk management process to ensure our ability to fulfill our service level agreement (SLA) requirements to our customers and capability to serve them on their daily needs. We have also ensured that our contingency plans are up to date.
Our organisation and operations are audited against the KATAKRI 2015 framework level III (elevated level) requirements and we have a national information security certificate. Our contingency plans and processes follow these guidelines.
Back-up plans
- Our capabilities to work remotely have been tested and VPN connections backed up. For the customer needs that require dodge-site working spaces, our initial plans have been evaluated and key personnel has been informed about the possible measures regarding reallocation of work premises.
- We have asked all our people to make sure that they are able to work from home if needed, should some of our teams or offices be quarantined. That includes testing connections beforehand, and taking a laptop home when leaving the office daily, unless there are some security related restrictions.
- We are ensuring backup persons/delegates and making sure documentation is up to date in case of a longer sick leave.
- Our employees are a key asset not only to us, but also to our customers. Therefore we have reviewed our plans for the deputies of our key personnel to ensure our operations and customer projects continue seamlessly.
- We have made an effort to anticipate computer orders beforehand due to longer lead times that are caused by factories being closed in China.
Let’s do our best together to keep our people safe and the effects of the coronavirus to minimum.
Further information:
Lauri Helenius, SVP, Strategic Accounts, +358 40 5294 354, [email protected]
Author
Solita
