Thank you – COVID-19 preparedness and response

Although this is the first novel virus during our lifetime to send billions of people worldwide into quarantine, we have been ready for the likelihood of a pandemic and remain dedicated to protecting our clients, our communities and each other.

 

“Preparedness, when properly pursued, is a way of life, not a sudden, spectacular program.” —S. W. Kimball

 

Emergency Planning

 

Senior management meets periodically to review and update emergency plans, which includes preparing for the eventuality of a global pandemic. During the past two decades alone, we were prepared for SARS (2003) and MERS (2012), which are also coronaviruses. We were also prepared for the H1N1 influenza pandemic (2009), which ended in 2010 but continues to circulate as a seasonal flu virus. These emergency plans are not cookie-cutter. As our communications, technologies and processes evolve, so too must our plans and resources. And when there is a crisis, we show up every day to see it through.

 

The First Alert

 

Laura St-Louis, Manager, Occupational Health &Safety, first issued an advisory about COVID-19 to all supervisors in the field on 28 January 2020. The first confirmed case had just been reported in Toronto. In this advisory, Laura provided updates, information and links about active monitoring of the unfolding crisis.

 

The Second Alert

 

Laura’s second advisory, distributed 28 February 2020, included safety precautions that have since become a daily practice for us: physical distancing, decontaminating surfaces, not sharing household items, and more. By the time the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, we had already organized core response teams and measures.

 

Declaration of Emergency

 

Less than a week later, on 17 March 2020, the provinces of Ontario and Quebec declared a state of emergency and released a list of essential services. Although there were many uncertainties and emerging requirements, our support teams and commissionaires in the field truly stepped up.

 

Technology

 

IT procured computers, phones and equipment at exceptionally short notice so that HQ and office support teams could work remotely over a secure network. There were a lot of tech support calls in the early days! During this time, workflow increased by over 50% at all hours of the day, seven days per week. The number of urgent requests increased and every effort was made to address them.

 

Health & Safety First

 

Our Occupational Health & Safety team tripled in size to ensure commissionaires had the information and support they needed. Extensive research and monitoring was conducted daily. Senior management was briefed regularly throughout the day, seven days per week. We cannot express enough how hard they worked to protect commissionaires.

 

Regular Check-ins

 

Employees who self-quarantined because they were having symptoms, living with someone who had symptoms, or were identified by Public Health guidelines as vulnerable were contacted regularly to check in on them. With support from all departments, we reached out to commissionaires who had been posted abroad or had been travelling to make sure they returned home safely. Dispatch offered tremendous support to keep us in touch with all our employees.

 

Getting Our People Home

 

Among them was Sgt Julia Henry-Peart, Section Supervisor at Section 165, who returned from Delhi in March after a gruelling five-stop journey back to Canada. She wrote, “Thank you to all of you for sending good vibes and thoughts for me on my return. IT WORKED!!! I am not able to express my feeling of gratitude from everyone who made it possible for my return … I can’t wait to see all of you.”

 

Keeping Commissionaires Safe

 

Despite nationwide shortages of personal protection equipment (PPE), Corporate Services and our Quarter-Master (QM) teams collaborated to secure supplies from multiple vendors. Working closely with a newly formed Operations Wellness Team that included mobile patrollers, their combined focus was to distribute hundreds of thousands of masks, gloves, and disinfectant supplies to commissionaires throughout our service territory. COVID-19 protocols and ongoing supply needs were (and continue to be) tracked in a database.

 

Return to Work

 

With input from our Employee and Labour Relations team, the OHS team adapted and managed leave-of-Absence and Return-to-Work procedures specifically for COVID-19, produced an authorization letter to facilitate access for commissionaires needing to cross Ontario-Quebec border, and developed FAQs, safety tips and other guidance documents.

 

Employee Service Centre

 

Our team found resourceful ways to ensure your wages were paid on time and your benefits were protected and paid out. Our ESC team worked virtually to continue to answer your questions and provide assistance.

 

Recruiting and Training

 

In Quebec, we collaborated with the Bureau de sécurité privée (BSP) and the Association provinciale des agences de sécurité (APAS). Although hiring security guards with temporary permits was granted by the Quebec government during the state of emergency, in Ontario, license testing and first aid training facilities were shut down between March and July 2020. Unable to hire security guards in Ontario during this time, we continued to screen, interview virtually and train new candidates in every way possible. The Commissionaires Security Officer Course (entry-level CSOC) went totally online. We negotiated a waiting list of guaranteed courses with Ontario facilities so that our candidates could fill the first two weeks of training immediately after restrictions were lifted. We also adapted all Leadership Module courses for online.

 

Respect for Our Frontline Commissionaires

 

All these efforts and more were our way of showing how much we value the essential services being provided by supervisors and all commissionaires. OurBusiness Operations Managers, in touch with sections and clients directly, were especially grateful and impressed by the level of dedication they witnessed in the field. “Our commissionaires in the field were absolutely amazing,” said Gaby Khoury, Senior Business Operations Manager. “Supervisors have been really great. It was a total team effort.“