The morning roundtable discussion was attended remotely by approximately 161 members in a special Zoom meeting. The meeting started out with a short presentation lead by Jason Keen from Superior Construction in Jacksonville, Florida who covered the COVID-19 crisis and how it has impacted HR departments within the construction industry.  Jason shared his corporate HR experiences and recommendations before he displayed sample graphs, including the one below depicting quarantine cases by month and division:

Next, we listened to Sameer Purao from Austin Industries in Houston, Texas, who spoke about cybersecurity, given the heighted risks associated with the unusually large number of employees telecommuting from home each day during the COVID-19 shutdown.

The large group then broke down “virtually” into smaller break-out sessions (6-8 members per group) to experience deeper-dive discussions on the two main topics above, as well as other “hot” topics of interest. 

Primary comments and takeaways on how to tackle COVID-19 HR challenges included:

1. Providing safe work environment protocols on jobsites and offices, including cleaning stations, masks and sanitizing solutions. Educate the project team frequently!
2. Wearing masks and taking temperatures daily at job sites and at the office were “best practices,” especially in hot spot areas. Masks are expected to be worn whenever walking out of your office cube and during live meetings while maintaining social distances.
3. Providing at least weekly communications by the leadership teams. Many forms of effective communications methods were discussed, including live town hall meetings (Zoom and TEAMS), pre-recorded videos, toolbox talks, weekly e-newsletters, and one on one conversations to thank your essential employees.
4. Providing updates on CDC, state, and local guidelines.
5. Continuing to provide safety awareness among different geographical regions, job sites, and employee populations, including social distancing. Enforcing company polices can be challenging when operating in different offices and states and countries!
6. Considering employee benefits and health insurance resources, such as telemedicine options.
7. Providing rotation schedules (by department) to reduce headcount in the office in a way that encourages social distancing.
8. Tracking COVID-19 cases internally using HR software and BI dashboards. Consideration must be given to protect employee privacy – limit visibility to only those on a “need-to-know” basis .
9. Prepare now for a possible resurgence later this year – obtain suppliers now and implement new technology!

Lessons learned and comments noted during the cybersecurity discussions included:

1. Invest in more training to ensure that every employee has more awareness about and the competency to spot phishing exposures
2. Establish mitigating process controls in high-risk areas
3. Use encrypted e-mail services, such as the one provided under Office 365
4. Require phone conversations (one-on-one) whenever customers or vendors appear to send you e-mails requesting change of bank routing and/or account numbers
5. Ask your bank’s treasury management department for enhanced positive pay protection, including the scrubbing of payee names, check number, and amount
6. Keep offline (or segregated) backup files

After the small group breakout sessions were over, we all met back into one larger group again to share comments and observations. All groups commented that they had very lively discussions!

One person commented “The one key takeaway that I had was one of the companies in our group had the challenge that we all faced on not being able to source cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer. And so they were very innovative and started a division that makes cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer. I found that to be an enlightening in these very different times.”

Another person stated that they were able to discuss ERP systems and compared and contrasted features as they continue to search for a better solution.

Bottom line: the conference and breakout sessions were great again this year!

Copyright © 2020 by the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA). All rights reserved. This article first appeared in July 2020 Bottom Lines newsletter.