Amid times of uncertainty, companies can rise to the occasion to help stakeholders
Carmen Hughes
“Business as usual” has never been more unusual. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown people’s personal and work lives into an abrupt dystopia. Companies large and small find themselves in an unimaginable business environment filled with anxiety and uncertainty.
While all of us struggle to operate on such loose footing, we will find solid ground eventually. In these troubled times, with people falling ill and lives being lost, how do businesses, workers and people march on? There is no easy answer.
As companies move forward to find solid footing, they still do have control over how, what and when they communicate to their stakeholders. They are in the driver’s seat to recalibrate or pivot their products and service offerings to meet immediate needs, and they can innovate to help their constituents and the community at large. We want to take a minute to applaud the many big and small acts of kindness, collaboration and compassion that reflect just a few of the many companies rising to the occasion to help.
While these examples highlight big companies with deep pockets, there are an array of small businesses and startups retrofitting and innovating to help during this unforeseen crisis.
Adobe is offering teachers and students free, temporary remote access to its Creative Cloud applications as a way to temporarily relieve the unexpected loss of classroom resources.
Airbnb is providing free housing for 100,000 coronavirus responders around the world.
Chef Jose Andre’s ThinkFoodGroup has transformed eight of his restaurants into temporary community kitchens for people financially impacted by the pandemic. The to-go only gourmet meals will be offered for free or at $7 for those who can afford it.
Fanatics, which manufactures official MLB player jerseys, is retrofitting its Easton, Pennsylvania factory to make vital masks and gowns for healthcare workers on the frontlines.
LinkedIn is offering 16 free eLearning courses that help workers who have been shifted to work from home. The free courses include tips on how to stay productive, build relationships online, use virtual meeting tools (Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, Zoom, etc.), and balance family and work dynamics.
Nvidia is calling on all gamers to help with Folding@home, a distributed computing project. The call to arms asks gamers to lend the spare GPUs power from their graphics cards to a globally-linked network of PCs, essentially making a massive international supercomputer. The crowdsourcing of GPU power will improve ongoing research and knowledge related to the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). So far, 400,000 gamers have donated their GPU resources.
Tesla recently procured 1,200 surplus ventilators from China and flew them to the U.S. The company donated 1,000 of the lifesaving ventilators to California and will donate the other 200 based on urgency. The company also announced plans to reopen its New York production facility to manufacture medical devices instead of solar panels and will collaborate with Medtronic in producing ventilators.
Salesforce CEO unveiled a “no-layoff pledge” to its employees as part of an eight-point plan to deal with coronavirus. The company went further to create a $1.5 million dollar coronavirus fund and also donated $1 million to UCSF’s COVID-19 Response Fund and $500,000 to the CDC Foundation, which works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sweetgreen has dedicated its Outpost operations and teams to support healthcare frontline workers, delivering free meals to hospitals in the cities it serves.
Nike committed more than $15 million to COVID-19 response efforts. Nike has regionally earmarked its donation to help the Oregon Food Bank, Oregon Community Recovery Fund, Oregon Health & Science University, to improve care coordination throughout the state.