Covid-19: Communicate with employees, CEOs say

The top thing CEOs are doing to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic is communicating regularly with their employees and providing updates both on the situation and what the company is doing, according to the newly released results of a survey by global leadership network YPO. The survey, conducted over the previous week and drawing responses from over 2,750 CEOs around the world, found that 95 percent of CEOs have already taken action in response to the situation, with the top three actions being:

• Providing employees with regular updates (68 percent)
• Implementing new health and safety procedures (67 percent)
• Cancelling major events (64 percent)

Regular communication and protecting employee well-being also featured heavily in the advice that survey respondents offered to fellow CEOs.

Besides these measures, 53 percent of companies have stopped global travel, the majority being in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries where the outbreak hit first. Unsurprisingly, the survey found that business travel is the top area where CEOs are experiencing negative impact. This may have some relation to the current state of the aviation industry, which is slashing flights and headcounts as earnings tumble: estimates from the airline industry have suggested in the past that business travellers account for a relatively small proportion of travellers, but contribute a large share of profits per flight.

On the bright side, the YPO survey also found that 70 percent of CEOs expect to maintain their businesses’ headcount over the coming year, despite pessimistic forecasts about falling revenues. Only 22 percent had stopped recruiting, although this varies between locations: in Hong Kong, for example, a Randstad survey found earlier this month that 37 percent of companies had stopped hiring.

The survey, however, did not look into the five percent of CEOs who have not taken action. There are various reasons why a business leader might do nothing during such a crisis period, ranging from lack of knowledge about the appropriate measures to take, to lack of resources to take those measures, to the possibility that the company has already been so badly affected that the leadership considers any other actions extraneous. Whatever the reason, the situation will hopefully look up for this minority of leaders.