5 Keys to Managing When Everyone's Out Sick, Again
1. Don’t run your offices at capacity.
“The number one thing” firm owners can do is stop pushing their teams to run at full speed, according to Herbers.
This takes us back to “basic business planning,” she said, noting, “we’ve seen, in recent years, advisory firms running at 100% capacity — in other words, not leaving space within their organizations for advisors to be sick, to take vacations, to be ill, in the industry.”
And that is a huge strategic mistake because “running your firm at 100% capacity is not sustainable” — especially “when you get into these crisis periods,” she warned.
“Ensuring that you’re running at something at or under 80% capacity — so you have some space” will go a long way toward easing the issue, she added.
2. Give your staff permission to be ill.
“What we are seeing across the firms is that they are asking their employees that, if they have COVID and don’t have symptoms, or if they have the flu and they don’t feel so bad, just to continue to work from home, not come into the office and spread it around,” Herbers said.
“This is posing a big problem because what’s happening is the advisory firms are asking their employees to continue to work, even when” they’re ill, even when at home, “which has been leading a couple weeks later to some burnout,” she pointed out.
It is important to “give your staff permission to be ill, and then try to limit the amount of work that is actually being done [by them], because we want them to get well as fast as possible,” she said.
3. Allow for a ‘reset’ period.
“If firms get to a point of these very high levels, which is 30% of their workforce out of the office, you’ve got a remaining workforce that’s picking up all of that slack,” Herbers noted.
So “there has to be some sort of reset period” to allow people who may be working very long hours to, in the future, when some of the workforce gets back to work, to take a break, to “reset so that they aren’t also putting their health … at risk” by burning out, she explained.
Otherwise, this issue “will ultimately lead to potential turnover, potential culture issues [and] extended periods of workforce absenteeism,” she said, adding it’s also “going to burn the leaders out just trying to manage all of that.”
4. Return to a remote environment if needed.
“Prevention is the best option when we’re seeing high levels” of a workforce out sick, Herbers said. “One of the ways to not spread illness is to go back to a 100% virtual environment” and remain there “for the time being as we see COVID cases increasing and then flu and illness spreading across” the country, she noted.
“That would be the best way to prevent some of these things from happening … Because [of] the nature of an advisory firm, when you have 30% of your workforce out, you’re running into serving-the-client issues or [not] being able to help the client when the client really needs the help,” she explained.
Additionally, “making sure that you’re allowing a hybrid work culture” will help in the long run, she added.
5. If you’re not already doing it, follow CDC guidelines.
“If you’re not following CDC guidelines, then you’re just putting yourself and, more importantly, your clients, at risk,” according to Herbers.
“To me, that would be pushing the lines of business ethics,” she said, urging firms to “follow the rules,” and adding: “There’s a reason those rules exist and, whether you agree with them or not, it is in the best interest of the well-being of your clients and of your staff. And there’s really, to me … no exception as to why you wouldn’t follow that guidance.”
If you are running an advisory firm and do all of those things, “you’ll capture the growth in a potential down market,” she predicted. “You’ll have the capacity to serve that growth and, [if] you continue to hire great talent who [are] frustrated with the cultures that they’re in, you’re going to win in three to five years down the road. Hopefully. Assuming we don’t have another pandemic,” she said with a laugh.
Pictured: Angie Herbers
