Not on the frontlines of COVID-19 relief? Here’s what your organization can still do to help.

Everyone now knows someone in isolation, on layoff, or displaying concerning symptoms. Already, I have friends and students whose personal economic situations have been shattered. Their shifts, or jobs, are gone — and they are not coming back any time soon. And the crisis will likely last far longer than many leaders have officially told us.

What are the responsibilities of institutions, of institutional leaders, of system leaders, and of working professionals at this time? It is a time for national mobilization — for each institution of society, each formally empowered leader, and each person with those organizations to bring her or his resources, abilities, and creativity to bear on this national crisis. And no institution can be on the sidelines.

In particular, leaders and institutions that are not delivering essential public health services need to ask a series of questions – to answer the question, quite simply, of what they can do for their country. Which institutions and systems are doing which work?

But first, let’s take a look at what is already happening. Pretty much every aspect of the health and social services system, and every worker in these systems, is attending to the crisis. Keep in mind: all of these institutions need to do this with stretched resources, with people putting themselves at risk, and while continuing to attend to the populations and people who have other needs. And many of these patients and clients are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

It is a time for national mobilization — for each institution of society, each formally empowered leader, and each person with those organizations to bring her or his resources, abilities, and creativity to bear on this national crisis.

Many other institutions in society are doing their part. Some are running to provide the essential services in those systems — food distribution; transportation; electricity and water; telecommunications; supply chain management — that we need for us to deliver on those essential public health needs. Others are providing free access to information, entertainment and other services that they’d usually ask people to pay for.

Provincial and local governments are doing their part to support these systems, and to help workers and people on the margins stay on their jobs or reduce expenses. The federal government is moving to support incomes and businesses in the near term. With so much economic activity cratering, direct income support beyond the current level of 1% of GDP (from the federal government’s Wednesday announcement) will almost certainly be needed — and other levels of government will have to provide income supports as well.

It was heartening to see members of Canada’s business community write this weekend with their understanding of what is at stake. Friday’s federal announcement, with the potential to convert private manufacturing capacity towards public health needs, is an important step, following on the work by some businesses and public institutions (for instance in manufacturing hand sanitizer and donating supplies) earlier in the crisis.

What other work could be done?

But still other institutions are on the sidelines. As they struggle to keep up, and serve their staff, constituents, and clients, they will need to turn their attention to the greater good. They are proceeding with business as usual, though with greater uncertainty, and working remotely.

Every institution and institutional leader has to look within and ask a series of questions in this era of national mobilization. They need to answer them in relation to some of the essential systems we need right now (surely an incomplete list): health and public health; social services; education; food distribution; transportation; customer service operations; electricity and water; telecommunications; supply chain management; media and entertainment.

Here are seven questions that leaders and institutions that are not in the core of the crisis response could run through, with their teams and organizations:

1. What resources do I have that can be given up now for those essential systems?
2. What expertise is within my organization that can be made available to others?
3. What practices, resources, or networks do I have access to that can be retooled for national mobilization?
4. Can I abandon any of the natural competitive impulses within my sector, in the name of co-operation and national mobilization?
5. Are any of my people better situated elsewhere— in those essential systems, or in those coordinating institutions, rather than staying in my organization?
6. What business-as-usual practices can we abandon to help us work quickly to answer questions 1 to 5?
7. For businesses and large public sector institutions, to what extent am I willing to sacrifice the primary objective around shareholder return, or client or staff satisfaction — beyond what will already happen due to the recession — to help me answer the five questions above? To help keep other key institutions afloat, am I willing to cut salaries, accept job loss, or more?

Hopefully, posing these questions can spark discussions within organizations and unleash new creativity, and a new sense of mission, well said by Ed Greenspon and Robert Greenhill in some of their recent writing.

Everyone will need to sacrifice, and we will be able to tell when leaders and institutions don’t make those sacrifices. We will need political leaders — the Prime Minister and Premiers in particular — and other institutional leaders to make specific calls for people and institutions of means to make sacrifices, and to turn their institutions towards the needs of national mobilization.

Without collective sacrifice and national mobilization, our ability to respond to COVID-19 and our social cohesion are at risk. I am confident that Canadians, and Canadian institutions and leaders, are up to the task.

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