Practical ways for businesses to help during the Coronavirus outbreak
Like many other businesses, we have been trying to think of the practical ways that we might be able to help during the Covid-19 outbreak, over and above continuing to provide our normal, remotely-based consultancy services. Here are our top three as we thought they might be relevant to lots of other organisations:
Enable staff volunteering. If your teams have a bit of spare capacity and are in a position to get more directly involved, businesses can free up their time to do so. Safely organised support within local communities is invaluable at this time. Individuals can also offer to join the 'army' of volunteers needed to pick up shopping and medicines or simply to chat over the phone to support the 1.5m people in England who are at most risk. For more information and to sign up, see the central website for NHS Volunteer Responders which uses the GoodSAM Responder app.
Share with other businesses. Reach out by phone or electronically to other businesses and organisations even beyond your normal networks to offer ideas, support and requests for help. There are some new initiatives to help to enable collaboration, for example #bringbiztogether as well as the great work of the well established Local Enterprise Partnership Growth Hubs and industry associations.
Offer relevant technologies & other capabilities to the Government. The Government and its agencies are launching calls for various innovations and kinds of support. Everything from rapid sanitisation solutions for ambulances to digital support for people who need to stay at home because of coronavirus. To see what is needed now and as things evolve, keep an eye on this web page on gov.uk.
(Thumbnail photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash)
