Communications Are More Important Than Ever
As companies refine their protocols for creating an environment safe from COVID-19, communicating what’s in those protocols with every employee is critical for them to be successful. Communication and training are included in Aptiv’s Safe Operations Protocols, which we have shared publicly.
Early in the crisis, Aptiv established dedicated channels on our intranet and social media platform to provide a single point of reference for employee communications. We also provided a link for employees to anonymously submit questions or concerns, and we instituted a weekly “employee pulse” survey in multiple languages to assess concerns and identify communication gaps.
While it’s important to have consistent messaging from leadership communicated throughout a global organization, we’ve found it’s also a good idea to allow regions or countries to present that messaging in ways that will better resonate with their employees. Tap into your company’s cultural diversity and creativity – perhaps they would prefer to communicate the policies graphically, with analogies or images suited for the region. At Aptiv, employees at one of our facilities composed a song detailing best practices and posted a music video on our intranet.
Aptiv has put together material in multiple languages for our 140 sites to use to inform and train our employees. The materials cover the basics of what the coronavirus is, how it spreads, the symptoms and prevention techniques. Feel free to download the deck, and adapt it to educate your own employees.
To convey our policies and approach, Aptiv has conducted detailed training sessions, in different time zones, around the world. This gives teams at sites across the organization a chance to ask questions and express any challenges they face in implementing protocols. And it gives managers immediate feedback that they can use to improve or clarify the requirements or the level of detail needed for execution. In total, more than 400 operations leaders, plant managers and environmental health and safety personnel have been trained on our Safe Operations Protocols.
Aptiv also wants to help our entire supply chain, as well as our contractors, to minimize risks, so we can all restart safely together. We’ve offered multiple “supplier summits” covering our protocols, facility readiness, inventory and contingency planning to ensure we are all on the same page. In fact, we’ve even gone a step further, and communicated our plans with a number of industry associations.
Transparency and open communications will help to give employees confidence that companies are doing all they can to allow them to return to a safe environment. We’re all in this together, and that’s why we’ve got to keep communicating and sharing best practices as we move forward.
