Women Who Lead panel discusses: Emerging from COVID-19: What’s next?

With the lifting of mask mandates and restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are able to reopen but also face a variety of questions and issues. We asked the panelists from our June 22 Women Who Lead event about what issues their organizations had faced and were addressing and how they thought society would continue to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joyce Smithey
Managing Partner
Smithey Law Group

What steps have you and your organization taken to determine what is the best way to manage the recovery and emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic?
As a law firm, we were very lucky that many of our employees were already working remotely with great success. We are going to continue providing flexibility to our employees, even without the health and safety necessities of COVID. Our biggest concern now is addressing the morale issues that may have developed from working away from our colleagues for over a year. We are planning to do a firm-wide event in the fall that brings everyone together for some strategic planning, but also for some relaxation and socializing.

What impacts do you think the COVID-19 pandemic has had on women specifically? And how might things be different now as women are faced with choices of returning to work, easing restrictions and managing family responsibilities in what may be continued uncertainty about how other people and groups have reacted.

I think COVID has unfortunately magnified the problems of work-life balance for women, especially those with children in remote schooling. I know several women attorneys who had to scale back their work obligations during COVID, and it’s tragic that these women may now be set back in their career tracks. Hopefully, the silver lining is that the pandemic has forced the issues to the forefront for
many, and now remote work is likely to be more widely offered and accepted. Firms need to offer flexible work arrangements to ultimately retain their female employees.

What do you think is the biggest legal issue to consider or be aware of as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic? Are there specific issues that women need to consider or be aware of as they often are the primary caregiver for their families, both immediate and extended?
The legal focus for employers is going to shift from implementing telework policies to bringing the workforce back into the office. Employers will need to understand the laws around employees who cannot work or refuse to return to work, such as higher-risk employees with medical conditions. Employers also should look beyond their legal obligations to consider policies such as additional paid or unpaid leave for employees who may have children or eldercare responsibilities.

What do you think is the biggest issue for people to consider as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic?
COVID has reinforced how misinformation and political divides can interfere with public health and safety initiatives. It is critical to push back against the spread of misinformation and educate communities to establish trust in our government and the medical community.

Maria Darby
Chief Operating Officer
Keswick

What steps have you and your organization taken to determine what is the best way to manage the recovery and emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic?

As a health care organization, our post-pandemic and pandemic experience is similar in that Keswick has very specific federal, state and local regulations that govern almost every aspect of our services, including visitation, meetings, masking and other infection control measures for residents, their families and our staff.

In areas where Keswick does have latitude, we have aired on the side of caution recognizing that the people we serve on the campus in the nursing home and in the rehabilitation units are frail and/or recovering from surgeries, falls and other serious health issues. And, we want those in our care to feel safe and be safe and we want that same thing for our staff team.

For our community-based services, such as The Wise & Well Center, we follow the local guidance given by the mayor regarding gathering and masking. As we move out of the pandemic our Keswick Community Health community-based services, which are entirely separate from the regulated medical Keswick Multicare, will continue to offer virtual programming for older adults but we are also fully open for in-person, socially distanced, masked programs and activities in the Wise & Well Center. We know that social isolation among older people has increased significantly during the pandemic and we have created an environment in the Wise & Well Center that facilitates our ability to gather in person safely.

What impacts do you think the COVID-19 pandemic has had on women specifically? And how might things be different now as women are faced with choices of returning to work, the lifting of restrictions and managing family responsibilities in what may be continued uncertainty about how other people and groups have reacted.

The pandemic has been difficult for everyone, that’s for certain; however, I do think that women have experienced this impact differently or to a greater extent. In our society, in many cases women still shoulder a disproportionate share of domestic and childcare responsibilities, meaning that for many women, they had to handle the lion’s share of the homeschooling, home management tasks while still working full time whether that was from home or in person.

In the health care field, which employs large numbers of women, this issue of increased responsibilities at home while handling the impact of a pandemic in the workplace had a significant impact for many of our employees, both mentally and physically.

What did you or your organization do to provide information to those that may have reached out with questions and concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines?

Keswick has been very active in the vaccine space, not just for our staff team but for residents, their families and the community. In the weeks before a vaccine was available, Keswick held town hall meetings for all staff at every level of the organization. At those meetings, executive leadership team members and clinical team members shared factual information, answered questions, provided resources and offered personal consultations with our medical director and/or other nurses as requested by individual staff members, residents and/or their families.

We also created a short video with our medical director and showed it to all staff, put in on our website and social media and shared with residents and families. We are pleased that Keswick has a 88% staff vaccination rate and a 82% resident vaccination rate, almost triple the vaccination rate that the CDC has shared related to nursing homes.

To support vaccine efforts in the community, Keswick has hosted and will continue to host community vaccine clinics here on our campus in partnership with the local Giant Pharmacy. We believe that vaccines are important and we are doing whatever we can to dispel myths, correct false information and share educational resources in all mediums available to us so that people can make an informed decision and if they do decide to get the vaccine, we are ready to help them get vaccinated on our campus or at another vaccine site.

What do you think is the biggest issue for people to consider as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic?’

The biggest issue for all of use is to take what we learned from this pandemic experience and  use it as we plan for future eventualities. It is also important that we start doing the “regular things” in our lives. We cannot be afraid to live. We need to take precautions, make good choices, get vaccinated and remain diligent but we do need to go on living. Social isolation is not good for us individually or as a community.

Dr. Paula Turner
Supervisor of Science, Health, P.E. & STEM
Dorchester County Public Schools

What issues have you seen in terms of the education of students through the COVID-19 pandemic? 

As a true servant to the education community, the issues that arose due to the pandemic that touched my heart and kept me up at night, especially as a high school principal, tied directly to those we serve and to our teachers. The well-being and social-emotional health of our parents and guardians weighed heavy on my heart as I witnessed them juggle maintaining financial stability for their households and being a support system to their school-aged children.

The next unfortunate pattern was the mental strain our students were enduring.  Our pumpkins did not have their social connections to maintain their mental health whether it be through sports, clubs, academics, or just being in the physical safe space of their beloved friends and/or teachers. We know that if your basic needs are not taken care of you are not equipped to learn and soar. Yes, the teaching and learning process had to go on but did we think the majority of our children would soar academically during the pandemic when their basic needs and foundational routines were severely disrupted?

Finally, and this was tough and caused me to just weep on many occasions: our teachers were on the front lines of having to navigate a new way of reaching and teaching our students. This alone caused them stress, but they too were carrying family and financial strains.  If it were not for some of them having their educator jobs, their families would have crumbled.  I don’t think many folk realize this.

What will need to be done to help students return to school after nearly a year of virtual learning? Do you think there will be specific areas students will need help with? 

Put the students back on the buses or drive them to school … we all (families and educators) just need our children back in the buildings and experiencing the plethora of support systems our school systems have in place for them. What children needed pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, and as we strive to rise up out of the pandemic is the same: to meet them where they are emotionally and academically every day.

How do you think the field of education has and will be changed, because of what we faced with the COVID-19 pandemic? 

Many school systems that were lagging in educating students in a more technological and global fashion have been forced to start educating students the way the global market demands, and this is a good thing. The pandemic has also illustrated there are more efficient ways of carrying out the teaching and learning process; administrator and supervisor duties; and professional development.

What would you tell parents who may be concerned about how to help their children as they adjust to the return to in-person instruction? 

I would tell parents to do what has worked for those parents that have already figured this out … be in contact with your child’s school.  Student success during any transition should never be left solely on the shoulders of the school or school system, parents need to be informed, present and make their voices heard. I have always believed parents are the stakeholders with the most power, especially when it comes to decision-making.

Patricia A. Browne
President and CEO
National Children’s Center (NCC)

How has your organization worked to make the decision about returning to in-person work? What issues have you considered in making this decision?

It has been a very thoughtful process.  We have reached out to other businesses in our sector to see what they are doing.  We have also researched EEOC and legal options to understand what we as an employer can legally do. Lastly, we held town hall meetings with our staff to understand their concerns, if any, about returning to the office.

We have designed a hybrid model to allow for social distancing, purchased air purifiers to ensure healthy air circulation and created a set of protocols for behavior in the office.  We will continue asking the COVID questions, recording temperatures and requiring masks as the workforce if not 100% vaccinated yet.

We continue to hold Ask the Expert Sessions with physicians to discuss and educate our staff hoping to continue to address vaccine resistance.  Persons that come in direct contact with persons supported are required to test regularly.  We are considering expanding the test requirement.  We have also taken into consideration childcare concerns for those with children at home.

What are some of the key issues your organization has addressed during the COVID-19 pandemic and how do you see those changing now as we are emerging from the pandemic?

First and foremost was the need to acquire all of the necessary PPE which was no easy feat in the early days. Next was to create a pandemic manual with protocols for each of our programs. Educate all staff, persons supported by our programs and family members on how to protect themselves from the virus, how to wear PPE correctly and ensuring a proper fit of PPE.

We quickly pivoted to a virtual environment for administrative staff and new employee orientation, we used an all-hands-on-deck team approach to support our programs with grocery and meal delivery to keep the most vulnerable out of grocery stores.  We created easy-to-read and understand communications about the virus to explain to our children and the adults we support with intellectual and developmental disabilities and we worked to create engaging activities to support people that could no longer go into the community to ensure their mental health and wellness.

We held regular Zoom town hall meetings with staff to stay connected realizing that some of them were isolated.  We found fun ways to celebrate the holidays with games and prizes to generate laughter during a time that we would normally be together.

As we return to the workplace, we will continue to have a virtual component to everything we do.  I would actually see our ability to leverage technology as a silver lining to the pandemic.  People are more open to embracing technology and we will continue to broaden our footprint with assistive and enabling technology and telemedicine in ways that we never did before.  We also purchased our own electrostatic cleaning equipment so that our facilities team could address small issues knowing that many vendors were not readily accessible.

How have you shared information with people as they consider issues around the COVID-19 pandemic from vaccines to returning to work or other things as society continues to reopen?

This has primarily been done with many town halls with medical professionals, we called Ask the Expert.  We created a COVID-19 resource site on our website that consists of videos from many people from various, racial, ethnic, gender and cultural backgrounds realizing that people trust hearing from people that look like them.  We collected photos of persons getting their vaccine with little testimonials about how they are feeling and why they decided to get it.  We also shared written communications with pictures showing the level of engagement and activities being enjoyed by persons in our programs.

We ensure that all of our group homes had laptops or tablets to enable family members to visit and participate in activities virtually.  Now, as some programs shift from virtual to in-person, we created videos to talk through and show all of the things that have been put in place.  Little short videos from facilities, from program directors, social workers and the like.

What do you see as the biggest issue facing people as we continue to recovery and emerge from the pandemic?

In my mind, the biggest challenge is a workplace and society where some are vaccinated and some are not.  Finding ways to safely co-exist while continuing to encourage the unvaccinated to get the shot.

This article is featured in The Daily Record’s Women Who Lead: A Woman’s Guide To Business. The mission of the Women Who Lead (formerly Path to Excellence) magazine is to give our readers the opportunity to meet successful women of all ages, backgrounds and beliefs and learn how they define success. Read more from Women Who Lead.