Going viral: Coping with COVID-19 – the new normal
Across the globe, nations are grappling with a crisis brought on by the coronavirus COVID-19. With many schools and businesses closed, daily lives have been disrupted; in so many aspects, our regular lives have ground to a halt. Working parents are trying to juggle between work and caring for their children. Corporations are implementing policy changes in the workplace to keep their employees and their customers safe. Technology companies around the world are setting up remote work arrangements for entire teams. Markets are reacting dramatically and circuit breakers aren’t proving to be as effective thus far.
COVID-19 and the challenges we face
People are hoarding food and supplies because there is more uncertainty than assuredness, as the impact of the virus spreads and fact is replaced by fiction. Social distancing and flattening the curve are terms we never thought we would learn in 2020. Yet here we are.
We are adjusting to the new normal.
On the positive side, we see communities banding together, pitching in to help feed school children who can’t get their normal meals at schools due to the sudden closures. Technology companies such as Cisco and Zoom are offering packages for school teachers to teach virtually, and for businesses to stay operational with remote work.
Microsoft, Twitter, and Apple are amongst the technology giants that have announced that they will continue to pay their hourly workers despite closures (Apple has even made the move to shut down all its retail locations outside of China). And while retailers such as Patagonia temporarily cease both its retail and online operations, they will continue to pay their employees during shutdown.
Unfortunately, the ugliness of humanity is also on full display, from bigoted comments directed at Asian populations, to sellers exploiting the demand for hand sanitizers and protective masks to people buying more toilet paper than they will ever possibly need. As Richard Turrin, author of Innovation Lab Excellence, points out, the crisis exposes our thin veil of civility.
What we are going through — together — as a society, reveals the painful inequality of our system, the gulf of opportunity within our culture. There are those privileged enough to be able to work from home, and others who simply won’t get paid if they don’t physically work. More often than not, those without flexible work arrangements are often in low-paying jobs without paid sick leave — and they are the most likely to be economically vulnerable.
According to statistics from the Bureau of Labor, amongst the bottom 25% of earners, only 47% have access to sick leave, and 24% have access to personal leave; only 9.2% of these workers have the ability to work from home. To make matters worse, 8.5% of Americans (27.5 million people) lack even the most basic health coverage — leaving them ill equipped to pay for testing and treatment should they become sick.
Last year alone, 26 percent of Americans deferred health care because they could not afford it. Unequal access to healthcare makes getting sick especially expensive for the poor. And if people can’t afford treatment, they pose a health risk to their entire community, causing a devastating feedback loop.
It’s no wonder that we are debating healthcare once again as we compare ourselves to the response of other countries and other systems, especially those places that have so far mitigated the impact of the disease as well as Hong Kong and Singapore.
How we respond to the crisis at hand speaks volumes about our values as individuals, as organizations, and as a society. We can either step up to the challenge and weather the storm together with our friends, our families, and our communities, or we can turn a blind eye to those who need us the most in this unprecedented and most uncertain time.
When this is all over — when we look back at the year that was 2020 — how would we remember the crisis? How will we remember the people who were part of our personal journey? While we might not remember the exact words people said, we will remember how they made us feel. We will remember how their actions impacted our lives and our community. We will remember those who made a difference, and those that made matters worse.
We admire people like Jill Castilla, President and CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond, who has been proactive in connecting with their customers and providing assistance where needed — she even publicly posted her phone number for any customer to connect with her for anything they need — even if it’s just to talk about what was happening.
We applaud the leadership of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, who was among the first big firms to tell their employees to stay home, as well as leading the way by promising to compensate their 4,500 hourly workers whose services are not needed during remote work.
It is through leadership that progress endures, that moments of crisis are tempered.
In this moment, this exact time where informed actions are needed and intelligent leadership is required, we urge everyone to dig deep — find their inner strength — and find ways to lead in this difficult time. Now more than ever, we must be kinder to one other, more patient with people we know and people we don’t. We must practice a new level of empathy — one that we are all capable of — as a moment of crisis connects all of humanity in this unexpected way.
We should think about those around us that we can use our help at this time. We should check in on your neighbors and offer any help, especially to those who are immune-compromised or elderly. We must check in with our parents and grandparents and loved ones and stay connected digitally. Social distancing does not mean social isolation. The technology we use so often for meetings can also be used to touch each other’s hearts.
It’s time to better leverage these tools to maintain our families, our friendships, our communities. It’s time for us to rethink the roles we play — given the chance, what would you do differently? How can we come out of this trying time even stronger than before? How can we create some good from this moment?
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
This is our opportunity to rise — as one community — less as one nation and more as one connected global society. We are in this together — and through our collective actions and our empathy — we will emerge to a kinder and more compassionate world.
Don’t stop believing.
Don’t ever give up hope.
We will get through this.
Together.
Tune in to the latest episode of #OneVision via iTunes and Spotify, where Arun, Bradley, and Theo chat about the impact of COVID-19 on our global society, and how we can rise to the occasion – to become a more thoughtful and inclusive world.
By Theodora Lau & Bradley Leimer
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