Virtual Breakfast Forum – Mar 25, 2021
In today’s Virtual Breakfast Forum we welcomed 13 members and guests to discuss current safety cultures. The big questions were:
- will safety culture be the same for your organization after the pandemic?
- what practices will you maintain?
- what will you change?
One member reported that his organization has seen 5 confirmed cases within the last 10 days. It was clear that these cases didn’t come from inside the organization. We speculated that the increase in cases is mostly due to complacency. People become comfortable and tend to forget the protocols, ease up on physical distancing, which is what’s gotten us where we are today. This is consistent to what’s happening all over BC, with current case numbers skyrocketing.
What will likely remain in organizations across the board, for one, will be visible cleaning protocols and maintaining clean looking environments for both staff and guests. Customers will have a higher expectation of cleanliness and will not be ready to let that go. Plexiglass and other barriers in facilities will likely remain. Having employees working from home seems to have been widely adopted by many organizations, and hot desks are proving to work well for many adopting the hybrid approach, resulting in a financial savings. There will be a higher demand for hybrid meetings, where in person meetings are offered. The expectation will be that people should have the right to choose how they are meeting with others, and have both options available to them. Work / personal related travel seems to be the number one concern for risk.
While we all took a while to become accustomed to new safety protocols, so it will take a while for us all to get comfortable with reverting back to a more normal life. It was agreed that physical distancing might not go away completely, because we’ve all grown more conscious about proximity. Most members agreed that masks will be the first thing to go, but it will take some time before everyone is comfortable not wearing masks.
A member shared an interesting statistic: that across Canada there have been only 121 cases of the flu reported, vs 35000 reported for the same period a year ago.
One fact remains, that leadership sets the culture in organizations, so it all starts from the top. As leaders we all need to keep up the high vigilance. Don’t relax or become complacent with your teams.
George shared some updates with the group:
- Dr Joti Samra will be speaking with us in June on Mental health at the CEO/leadership level.
- We will be looking for nominations for the Ben Hume Award – a leadership award presented to a member of EHSCBC, supported by MSABC, to recognize someone within the group that has done a great job over the last year.
Please nominate someone from our group. It’s a good way of expressing thanks and appreciation of each other.
- AGM – April 22nd, which will include the review of finances and ratifying the new board, will be incorporated into a Breakfast Forum.
- A short members survey will be sent out, to ask members what you are looking for from membership with the ESHCBC and what could we be doing differently. Please complete this to assist us with programming.
