Kickstart: A second shift for safety

For companies considered an essential business, one of the biggest issues leaders may face is how they keep operations running without putting their employees at risk from the coronavirus.

Obviously they have people working at home if they can. They tell them to stay home if they have any symptoms. They stagger breaks so everyone is not at the same lunch table at the same time.

Auxiliary equipment maker Davis-Standard LLC is going further, adding a second shift so fewer workers will be in plants at the same time, but still allowing the company to supply essential customers in the medical, food and pharmaceutical packaging industries.

"We continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation and manage operations to best serve you and the health and safety of our employees," President and CEO Jim Murphy said in an email sent to customers. "Our role as an 'essential business' is focused on supporting you as we ride out this crisis together in the best way possible."

Second shifts are now in place in Fulton, N.Y.; Union Bay, Wash.; and Mississauga, Ontario.

Now that workers are spread out, don't expect all that distancing to disappear overnight.

Fred Keller, the chairman of injection molder Cascade Engineering, writes in a blog post at Jackson Hole Economics that reopening the country will likely vary from state to state and even county to county, depending on the presence of COVID-19.

"Only when the rate of new infections has slowed to a pace where local healthcare resources are able to absorb the likely number of new cases can a region 'graduate' to 'stable status,'" he writes.

And when can the business community expect a return to normal?

That's not an easy answer, even for people used to looking at statistics and forecasting future growth. After all, while there have been economic hurdles before, such as the impact from hurricanes, none of those hit the global markets all at once, economist Bill Wood says.

"Nobody knows how long it will take, or how much we have lost," he wrote in his most recent Numbers That Matter column. "There is no model for this and no comparable historical event with which to compare."

But, he added, whenever "normal" returns, the U.S. economy has what is needed to grow once again.

If you need some silver lining to your clouds, May 6 is a PN Live webcast featuring two members of the Rising Stars Class of 2020, Caitlin DeMasellis and Jeremy Jackson. (Jeremy's profile will be posted online soon. We're adding them in alphabetical order. In the meantime, you can find them all here.)

And also a reminder that I'm accepting photos of your "real" home offices, not just the backdrop for your video chats.

Above is an in-house example of how we're all adapting to work from home via last week's PN Live webcast. We got Editor Don Loepp a nice vinyl backdrop for his videos, but, well, as you can see, getting the display to the right height is just a bit of a "make-it-work" issue. And yes, those are patio chairs on top of a patio table.

Sign up for PN Live with Rising Stars to see if he's found a better way to hang that backdrop. And email me a photo of your makeshift office setup to share with others, so we all know we're not alone: [email protected].