Text message alert employees about Coronavirus and sick policy
Ways to Use SMS to Keep Employees Healthy and Productive during a Public Health Emergency
BY TEXTMARKS STAFF · PUBLISHED MARCH 13, 2020 · UPDATED MARCH 16, 2020
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declar COVID-19 (the illness caus by the SARS-CoV-2 virus aka 2019 Novel Coronavirus) a Pandemic. Now with over 120,000 cases confirm worldwide, and the virus continuing to spread. It’s more important than ever to keep people inform and encourage good behavior! Text messaging is the optimal way to achieve this, with read rates over 98% for SMS compar to under 30% for email.
HR and Operations teams to communicate
The good news is that TextMarks makes it easy for employees immiately and effectively by sending out mass text messages to the entire company, divisions, departments, shifts, or smaller teams.
Tips and training for using and promoting your text Text Marks also provides messaging program. We previously outlin 6 Ways To Use SMS For Internal Communications. Here, we outline 4 new ways to enhance your internal communication SMS messaging strategy to address emerging health challenges, and provide helpful examples of the types of messages you might find valuable to send.
Clarify Policies & Resources
Each of the ideas below can be fine-tun for your organization and deliver as one or more text messages to your employees. A daily (or weekly, or twice weekly, etc.) announcement by text that arrives at a consistent time is a great way to keep people inform and engag. Mix and match the following ideas to populate your messaging strategy, and schule your messages to go out automatically each week!
Your company likely has a lot of work policies and resources available including sick leave, work-from-home, travel, client meetings, etc.
Some of these may be old policies, and some are likely evolving to meet new challenges. Do your employees know and remember all of them?
You can send reminders summarizing policies, linking to documents, and providing HR contact information so people know who to ask for clarifications. Some text message examples:
Reminder: if you have ANY cold or flu symptoms
Do not come in to work. Talk to your manager about your options.
Notice: No new international travel will be approv for now unless justifi as “Essential 1” (see myco.com/intra/travel).
Policy Update: Clients visiting our office are currently not permitt above floor 2 until further notice.
Announce Closures and Shift Changes
Whether due to staff outages, decreas Why is CPaaS a game-changer for A2P messaging? demand, supply chain disruption, or other reasons, you sometimes ne to make closures and shift changes, and these can often be last minute.
Getting the message to your staff immiately and effectively is essential to production business operations. Some text message examples:
Facilities Notice: Building 2 Cafeteria will be clos for the rest of the week. Center Cafe remains open and stock with additional food items.
SCHEDULE CHANGE: Night shift begins 7pm this week due to light staffing. Overtime may be available — talk to your manager.
Let Employees Report Concerns
In addition to sending mass text messages to employees, you can use TextMarks services to allow them to report concerns via SMS. This is a great way to get feback on facilities and policy issues such as bathrooms that are out of paper towels or hand sanitizer, sick leave policies people find confusing, etc.
Put a sign in the bathroom that says “How are we doing? Text BATHROOM to 72345 to report any issues”
Share Health Tips
How to wash your hands
Aside from the business-specific messaging strategies we’ve discuss so far, there are a number of health tips that can be shar to keep employees and staff safe and minimize spread of disease.
