Innovate and Strategize your Communication Plans to Return to Work and Schools Safely

Getting back to basics during the pandemic Covid-19 has now become a priority. Providing good customer experience has got a new meaning in the light of Covid-19. This has impacted how companies conduct their businesses amidst the stay at home orders, social distancing and a new way of life.

Businesses will now need to rethink their strategies and they can no longer go for business as usual. As getting back to the basics is extremely important now, building the blocks of the basics will need to be data driven. You need to learn, educate and innovate in order to build your way forward during these difficult times of the pandemic.

Covid-19 has resulted in schools all across the world being shut down from March 2020. This has kept more than 1.2 billion learners out of their schools and classrooms. A majority of these students successfully transitioned from offline to online schools. As the stay at home orders are slowly getting lifted across the world and in India, schools are gradually planning to reopen their doors to students and staffs. System leaders in schools across the nation are grappling with three crucial questions concerned with getting students back to the classrooms:

• When should they reopen?
• Which segment of teachers and students should they expect to return?
• What health and safety methods should they undertake as they plan on reopening?

Well there isn’t a right set of answers for these questions. The infection rates are fluctuating across communities and businesses, healthcare and education systems vary both in performance and structure.

Getting back to school

Different states in the country have different cultural values that influence the decision making. As the government guidelines around the Covid-19 pandemic is gradually starting to ease and students are planning to return to school soon, it is important that everyone knows what they need to do to keep themselves and others around safe. As a parent, one of the biggest challenges of this time is to manage the safety of your kids during the pandemic. With the back to school season lurking around, parents are faced with a new stressful question, is it safe to send my kid to school? While some parts of the country are still facing widespread transmission, school districts are planning for phased reopening of schools from the begging of September in regions where the transmission rates have subsided and the situation seems under control.

Communicating through signs

Uncertain times like the corona virus outbreak calls for innovative solutions. As businesses and schools adopt to the changing requirements posed by the outbreak, they are reviewing their strategies of reopening amid the pandemic. Though this is an extremely challenging task but if done in the correct manner right from the initial stages, there are strong chances of battling out the virus while being operational at the same time. The new age communication strategies revolve around communicating through signs and graphics. Businesses and schools, as they plan to reopen, rely heavily on communicating with their employees, visitors, students and staffs with different Covid-19 signs and graphics. These signs and posters when put up at the right place with the correct information, would influence staffs, students and employees to act responsibly and be accountable for one another.

Promoting hygiene and safety

As students are returning to school, the strategies spanning hygiene and sanitization are of utmost importance in the view of the pandemic. People who have been staying at the safety of their homes will feel sceptical to suddenly step out and send their kids to school in the midst of the pandemic. Implementing adequate hygiene and safety measures will instil the confidence of the people to whom you reopen the doors of your business. The same applies to schools reopening their doors to students and staffs. Ensuring that they promote and maintain all the necessary safety precautions within the school premise and keep the young ones along with the staffs and visitors safe is of utmost importance. Right from ensuring that proper social distancing standards are met to encouraging use of PPE and hand washing measures are extremely important. Sanitizing the entire premise and the high touch panels are required to be done at least twice daily. Students and staffs should be educated on hygiene measures and the latest government mandates concerning the pandemic. Awareness can be spread by putting up social distancing signage and Covid-19 signs across the school facility. The more educated and informed your people are kept, the better safety measures you will be able to implement.

As we return back to work and schools reopen, adopting the new normal, we must not forget that the virus is still lurking out there and there is no full proof cure to it discovered yet. The responsibility of keeping our employees, students and staff safe are the most important step in our effort to get back to normal and resume operations. Therefore, as you gradually plan to reopen, ensure that all your safety and communication strategies concern your people first.