Tips For Businesses During Flu And Virus Season

The global community has been talking about COVID-19 , a novel coronavirus disease that is spreading to cities that many members of our community call home.

If there are concerns about flu and COVID-19 transmissions in your area, you might be thinking about how these could impact your business and ways to communicate with families. No matter the circumstances, being transparent with families on how you handle health, safety, and general wellness on a regular basis is incredibly important.

We’ve put together suggestions for health and safety alongside recommendations and resources to help manage your business in the case of a school closure in your neighborhood.

Highlight The Importance Of Health and Safety

Communication and transparency is important especially when families are thinking about the health and safety of their little ones. Consider adding the following tips to your cleaning and wellness policies and sharing them with your community of parents, caregivers, and educators.

Include internal strategies for sharing important announcements and updates with staff, students, and their families.
Awareness is everything! Explaining your cleaning process to families and actively have a cleaning rotation so customers can see the process in action.
Routinely clean all surfaces in the workplace, such as workstations, countertops, and doorknobs with the appropriate cleaning agents.
Provide disposable wipes so commonly used surfaces — think doorknobs, keyboards, remote controls, desks — can be wiped down by employees before and after each use.
Clean toys and equipment regularly. Wipe down toys you plan to use or have finished using in class! When classes finish, take five minutes as a team to clean blocks, legos, musical instruments, etc. Make sure to put away clean toys that won’t be used in your next class.
Take extra care when vacuuming, mopping, sanitizing bathrooms, and wiping down surfaces like windows, tables and countertops.
Encourage everyone to wash their hands often with antibacterial soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing their nose, coughing, or sneezing.

Tip: Hand sanitizer is a substitute but should not take the place of hand washing.

Consider Offering Virtual Class Options

In the event of precautionary school closures in your area, consider offering virtual class options for families. Virtual classes can be pre-recorded content or a live class hosted through a streaming platform. You may want to share activities and materials that families can do together at home even if they aren’t able to attend in class — these resources can be simple worksheets, recorded music from class, song lyrics, movement games, or recommended stories.

This extension of learning goes a long way to create additional value for families and can be a fairly low lift to put together with your team.

Not sure where to start? Here are some resources to consider:

Sawyer Tools Tip: Message families from the class roster and share a unique link to the group with details about the streaming content. Reach a wider audience by downloading a list of your current customers in Sawyer Tools and send an email from your preferred email platform (Constant Contact or Mailchimp).

Create A Digital Community Space

If families in your neighborhood are staying home, create a private invite-only facebook page to nurture your community. You can also reach parents through a content sharing app like Class Dojo or Tinybeans if you’re already using one for your business. If you’re familiar with Slack, create an account for your business to post messages, hear from your community, share content, and more. Keep the conversation relevant, fun, and use this as a way to foster connection with one another beyond in-person interactions.

Be Flexible With Policies

If families are nervous about making future purchases at this time, you may want to extend cancellation and refund periods and highlight flexibility for parents. This can go a long way for families that may be afraid to commit to future plans without having the ability to cancel given extenuating circumstances. A business will always win if it puts its customers first!

Sawyer Tools Tip: You can update class policies and notes about your programs by editing activity details to include special notes and updates for parents in the order confirmation email. If you have general policies and terms listed on your site, you’ll also want to update those terms.

Extend Your Semester Schedules

In the event that you need to cancel or reschedule classes for a period of time, you may want to consider extending your semester or offering a few make-up sessions so that families are able to reschedule missed classes. If you offer drop-in pricing and scheduling at your business, you can also offer a few pack spots for people to reschedule these as drop-in classes at a later date.

Sawyer Tools Tip: Depending on the circumstances, there are a few flexible ways to reschedule classes. In Sawyer Tools, you have the ability to adjust dates of a semester, cancel and reschedule individual classes, and override scheduled activity dates as needed.