We have all been thrown into a situation that no one would have predicted 6 months ago. We watched the world begin to unravel with the Corvid 19 Virus. It did not seem real to me until reading Breaking News Friday the 13th of March. The NBA cancelled the remainder of their season and I thought 'whoa, this is a big deal.' Following that the Olympics were cancelled and then my fear set in. This was happening, it was here in the US and it was real.
It seemed like it snowballed from there until we closed our office the following Tuesday. I remeber feeling such sadness leaving the office that day and the thought of I may never come back to my office seemed rather real. It was a difficult decision to make when you have employees to consider. It was the first time we had been in the position of having to lay someone off work and with no notice really.
We were able to run payroll that week but knew there would be nothing coming in if we weren't there to see clients. Our employees could file unemployement but we knew that would be a % of what they really made. We also didn't know how long this would last. Would we ever return? Listening to some of the doomsday reporting it seemed possible. Watching New York come to a stand still and the death counts rising was a stark reality.
We were able to fairly quickly put some things in place to run some Telehealth appointments from our homes. This was not without glitches but we pressed on. As we went forward we learned new technology wasn;t that scary and we could do it.
We continued to see how valuable and loyal our employees were. They actually felt bad for us!