BizNews FEATURE
The coronavirus.
Air purification units donated by A.O. Smith arrive at Chinese hospitals.
From checking contracts to remote work, advice for navigating the coronavirus Arthur Thomas, staff writer IT IS MORE a matter of when, not if, the coronavirus will spread widely in the United States. “The data … and the spread in other countries has certainly raised our level of our concern,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a Feb. 25 conference call. “We don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen.” By March 6, the total number of confirmed U.S. cases of the coronavirus or COVID-19 had climbed to more than 200, including 14 deaths. That’s up from 14 confirmed U.S. cases on Feb. 25, when Messonnier issued her warning. Worldwide, there were more than 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and more than 3,400 related deaths at press time. “We really want to prepare the 12 / BizTimes Milwaukee MARCH 16, 2020
American public for the possibility their lives will be disrupted,” she said. She encouraged businesses to be flexible in responding to the spread of the virus. The CDC’s recommendations for businesses included the possibility of more telecommuting, flexible work hours or staggered shifts, and planning to operate with increased absenteeism. David Wangrow, assistant professor of strategic management at Marquette University, said the companies that handle the coronavirus best across industries will be the ones that plan ahead. That advance planning could come in a variety of forms, from having multiple suppliers in different geographies for components to identifying what it would take to accommodate more remote work.
“I’ll bet you a lot of companies … they’re going around and digging into their supply chain and seeing where the risks are,” he said. “Hopefully it has people asking some greater questions.” Kate Wegrzyn, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, said companies should be communicating with their suppliers, regardless of where they are located. “You want to start talking to them early. Even if they’re not located in China or some of the more affected regions, they may have subcomponents of that component that come from that place, so you need to make sure you’re talking with them early to make sure they can get the parts they need,” she said. Wegrzyn said Foley & Lardner has seen an increase in the number of clients asking the firm to prepare
force majeure notifications to let customers know they may not be able to deliver product on time. “Force majeure provisions are provisions that essentially relieve you from liability for not performing under the contract under certain circumstances,” Wegrzyn said. “Pandemic and disease may or may not be included in that, but the general ‘any cause beyond your reasonable control’ would be broad enough to capture that.” She said it is important for companies to look at their contracts early because some contracts include time limitations for when a company has to provide notice to their customer. “As the global scale of this increases and just about every company is impacted in some way, I think more and more they’ll be looking to their contracts to find out what, if any, protections they have if they’re not able to perform,” Wegrzyn said. Beyond looking closer at supply chains, Wangrow said companies should look at more day-today things. If remote work is not a common practice in an office, a company may need to evaluate what would need to happen to make it possible. “The good management practice would be to get people together, talk about what would work well with that, talk about where some of the limitations would be,” he said. Wangrow said restaurants and other service industries may be faced with several weeks of reduced traffic and may need to evaluate temporary changes in their business model. He said the best ideas for how to navigate through the challenge may come from employees. While larger companies likely have the resources to navigate
