covid-19 recovery plan · 2020-07-08 · covid-19 recovery plan 2 our plan covid-19 has affected...
TRANSCRIPT
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
1
Contents
Our Plan 2 Business Context 3 Business Continuity plan 3 Actions:
Customer Considerations Operational Team Member Support
4 4 6 6
Working Practices 7 HR Support 8 IT /Technology Support Finance Support Internal & External Communications Compliance, Legal & Insurance Cyber Security Performance & Monitoring Impact So Far Any Questions?
9 10 10 10 11 12 12 12
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
2
Our Plan
COVID-19 has affected our lives and challenged us all. Despite the pandemic, we have continued to support thousands of businesses in the healthcare, food, distribution, energy, and manufacturing sectors. These have included hospitals and providers to the NHS and Care Homes, along with many other companies who will help us re-build and provide jobs in the UK and across the World.
We are proud to have satisfied all areas of the British Safety Council risk management and control measures relating to COVID-19 workplace protocols – a copy of our Assurance Statement can be accessed here.
Cromwell’s priority continues to be the safety and wellbeing of our Team Members and our customers, whilst ensuring we continue to deliver an exceptional level of service to keep our customers’ operations running. We are a vital cog in keeping the wheels turning and are proud to support industry as we help to re-build and get things back to normal.
With this in mind, we have produced a detailed Recovery Plan, which has been developed by a dedicated group of experts from around our business, our Incident Response Management Team. We have considered a wide range of issues and scenarios that may affect our Customers and how we will continue to help you keep your business running. We will also share the actions we have taken with our own business to maintain our operations; this is intended to give you total confidence given the important part we play in your supply chain. We have also set up a dedicated email address for any additional queries you may have [email protected] or you can contact me directly.
Key Contact
Neil Jowsey Managing Director [email protected]
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
3
Business Context
Cromwell is a business to business supplier who operates in the ‘Industrial Supplies’ or MRO market. For over 50 years we have been Keeping Industry Working, providing the very best support to more than 30,000 customers of all sizes in the manufacturing, transport, energy, food, and healthcare sectors. We are based in Wigston, near Leicester, where we have two large distribution centres (the WDC and BRC) and our Head Office. We have a contact centre based in Brierley Hill in the West Midlands and 39 UK branches across the UK with warehouse and trade counters. We also have operations Internationally in the APAC and EMEA regions. We employ 1600 Team Members, around half of those in sales and customer service. We offer a wide range of products – about 500k in total, and we stock around 100k in our UK warehouses. These are a mixture of national brands and our own brands, which are manufactured mainly in the Far East and Europe. We are part of W.W. Grainger, a US-based industrial supplies company and American Fortune 500 company.
Business Continuity Plan
Cromwell continues to utilise a cross-functional incident response team in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team meets twice a week to review our customer, supplier and team member needs, performance metricss, actions completed, strategy versus new Government guidelines and priorities of the week.
The team have actioned business continuity plans in line with all applicable Government Guidelines:
• Locations of team members (home, return to Cromwell location, continue at Cromwell location).
• Continue with stress testing reductions in headcount down to 75% / 50% / 25% and the servicesimpacted in the event of a second wave.
• Confirmed infection within a location with deep cleaning strategies implemented.
• Continuing to help team members balance personal needs, homeschooling, childcare needs againstbusiness needs which has included flexible working and Team Member task realignment to ensurecritical service coverage. Distribution Centre training has been tested with a view to calling in otherfunctions should the needs arise with ease.
• Alternative IT arrangements to include but not limited to teams, remote switchboard management,increased homeworking abilities.
• Continuous improvement programs looking at processes and allow quick and responsive changes tocustomer needs and Government guidelines.
• Government monitoring sites joined to ensure continued compliance across all areas includingimport, export, HSE, product compliance etc.
• Partnering with the British Safety Council, utilising their Covid Assurance Program including a 2-dayremote audit of our Covid plans and actions taken. Alongside their continuous monitoring reviewprogram.
In line with our employee and customer privacy policies. Additional requirements for team member health data will only be used to prioritise the safeguarding of employees' health and safety needs. No additional personal data is being obtained or shared regarding our customers or suppliers, and all IT safeguards remain in place.
Key Contact
Toni Johnson Compliance Director & DPO [email protected]
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
4
Actions
Customer Considerations
Products and Inventory We are working hard to maintain excellent stock levels of the products you buy. We have been monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on our Far East suppliers since before Christmas and our European suppliers for the last 4-5 months. We constantly monitor any restrictions to trade being imposed by Governments and re-source as described below.
We hold over £70m of inventory which naturally affords you a degree of service protection and we have implemented a prioritisation process for existing customers. This is managed by our ‘Mission Control Team’ who meet every day to discuss our customer needs and priorities to ensure we get you the products you need and fast feedback if we don’t have what you need. Where relevant, we have identified suitable alternative products from our existing range or sourced new products and your Account Manager can support you with any detail you require. Being part of Grainger is highly beneficial as they have a team of 200 people based in China, who are constantly helping us communicate with our suppliers locally.
As China returns to work, we are seeing the flow of goods improve each day. We have been using air freight where necessary. We continue to monitor the risk to availability from our suppliers. We also monitor current and future in-stock levels, overall and by customer and can share this information with you. Currently, we have been maintaining levels of product availability in excess of 90%, with safety and hygiene products being the most impacted category. We have purchased millions of additional safety products – disposable masks, gloves, wipes, sanitizer, coveralls and so forth, with more arriving every day.
Our team will keep you fully informed of the progress of your order especially for any production critical items.
Deliveries Our own delivery drivers continue to operate as normal with enhanced hygiene protocols and PPE and we plan to increase the share of deliveries made this way, due to the customer knowledge and high service levels provided by these dedicated team members. Most deliveries continue to be made the next day. Like most delivery companies we will sign our own electronic delivery tablets on your behalf - we hope this is acceptable to our customers in these extraordinary times. We are also working closely with third party carriers such as Parcelforce, to maintain our usual high levels of service. However, due to demand on their network some early morning timed deliveries may not be guaranteed.
Quotes We are increasing the number of colleagues that we are returning from furlough to ensure we turn quotes around quickly. We are consistently beating our 4-hour target on most quotes, with only large (>25 items) or complex orders sometimes needing more time.
Competitive Prices We are known for our competitive prices across a wide range of products and brands and intend to maintain this reputation. Being part of the largest industrial distributor in the World helps us buy competitively and we pass these great prices on to our customers. We have not increased our standard product pricing as a result of the supply shortage, where you will see an increase is on alternative products where we have had to buy at higher cost and those shipped by air to ensure security of supply. Our technical sales engineers and account managers can also help with ideas to help lower your costs through alternative products, lower cost in use and so forth.
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
5
Wide Range With more than 100K products in stock, we have a huge range available to help you get back to work. Our COVID-19 catalogue showcases the range of products we have available, whether you are re-starting your factory, getting people back to the office or ensuring those who will continue working from home have everything they need.
Digital More customers than ever are increasingly reliant on our online solutions. We have well developed web trading capabilities serving more than 10,000 customers. We offer a public website www.cromwell.co.uk, a B2B version of this site with additional features and EDI trading too. We have developed online training videos to help customers and our own sales teams to support customers to transition to this easy way of ordering from us.
Our B2B and EDI solutions allow you to see your specific pricing and product range and include considerable controls and reporting functionality to help you control costs and reduce your overall spend. For further support contact your account manager or email us at [email protected]
Service / Sales We will keep our operations running to ensure yours can too. Our Service Teams continue largely as normal, with many working from home. We have increased our weekday opening hours from 8am – 5pm to 7am – 7pm to allow more flexible working hours for our customers and colleagues. We have configured our phone systems to route across the country to find the next available person, although this might not always be the normal contact in the current circumstances. Our Account Managers, Product Specialists and Technical Engineers are available to visit you on site, by video conference or telephone. Should the requirement be a visit then we will ask you to let us know what PPE and hygiene requirements you have in place first, so that we come prepared.
Branches / Trade Counters Our local branches remain open with enhanced hygiene and social distancing protocols in place, this enables us to continue supplying you. If colleague numbers get too low, we will switch to a nearby branch and have built contingency stock of key products to support this. Our trade counter entrances are available for you to use to collect product you have pre-ordered. We ask that you call us in advance for us to prepare your required product and agree a collection time. We have installed Perspex screens for your safety if you decide to visit us to collect products. Their weekday opening hours 8am-4.30pm are unchanged.
Vending We provide vending machines to many customers to provide inventory of key products 24/7 to keep their operations running, reduce spend/inventory levels and provide traceability for certain products. Our Customer Supply Coordinators are continuing to operate as normal filling machines each day or in accordance with new agreed ways of working. We are also working with customers to spot extraordinary usage of key safety products such as masks. We are reviewing and optimising machines via our ‘Boost’ programme to make sure you have the maximum capacity in machines to reduce the number of fills required. Our vending service levels are being maintained above 98%. We can also advise you on safe and hygienic operating practices for their use by your team members.
Payments / Invoice Queries Our Customer Service and Finance teams are continuing to operate as normal, subject to the various limitations highlighted already. Alternatively, our team of account managers can be contacted, and they are ready to assist you.
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
6
Technical Advice We have teams of technical sales engineers, technical product support managers and product category managers who are available to visit you on your site (if you allow this) or via phone or video conference to offer advice on products and/or process improvements and cost saving initiatives.
We employ more than 40 people in these roles, the relevant expert can be contacted in the first instance through our central contact centre [email protected] or by telephoning 0800 022 4455. We have 12 team members who focus on Safety issues and they would be happy to help with any specific questions you may be facing with the challenges posed by COVID-19.
Service Providers We have reviewed our various service providers’ level of risks and their continuity plans, including utilities, logistics, cleaning, maintenance etc. There are no significant risks identified at this time, but we continue to monitor the situation.
Key Contact
Elaine Barnes Chief Customer Officer [email protected]
Operational Since early February, our Incident Response Management Team has worked on numerous different business impact assessments and have considered our resilience plan through various lenses:
• Team Member support
• Working practices
• HR and IT Support
• Customer considerationso Products and Inventoryo Deliverieso Service and Saleso Branches / Trade Counterso Digitalo Vendingo Payments/Invoice Querieso Technical Adviceo Service Providers
• Finance Support
• Communications
• Compliance, Legal and Insurance
• Cyber Security.
Team Member Support The support, safety and wellbeing of our Team Members is paramount and we continue to follow the guidance issued by a number of domestic and overseas government agencies including: Public Health England, the Department of Health and Social Care, World Health Organisation, ACAS and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
7
We continue to protect our most vulnerable team members, including:
• Age >70yrs
• Underlying health conditions – self or a close family member
• Pregnant women and their partner
• Personal anxiety.
These Team Members continue to be assessed and enabled to work from home where possible, with daily and weekly guidance for themselves and their managers to ensure their safety and emotional wellbeing. This has been further enhanced with a dedicated wellbeing site accessible from other sources to support team members and their families.
Working Practices Hygiene We extended our Team Member hygiene plan, setting up automatic hand sanitizer dispensers at all entries and exits, and many additional ones throughout the building. We have installed hygiene stations in each work area and provided personal hand sanitizer to every team member. We check temperatures of colleagues who enter our premises daily.
All roles have been assessed and PPE defined and allocated as required. This has come as a direct control measure from our risk assessments. Care packages have been distributed to every one of our 1600 team members to support them and their families at this challenging time. All team members interacting with customers and customer sites receive a weekly call via their branch location to check PPE levels and replenish them where required.
Regular and clear communications are part of our recovery plan, with in-house produced communication briefs and posters combined with those available from outside agencies, to reinforce the need for increased hygiene such as regular hand washing and maintaining social distancing rules. The wellbeing SharePoint site also holds a copy of all communications to help all team members’ awareness.
Team Members have also been asked to refrain from shaking hands and other personal contact and not to make drinks or prepare food for others.
Social Distancing Wherever possible we have encouraged team members to work from home. Each person who is working from home first completed a simple 2-page questionnaire checking the suitability of their role, ability (including equipment) and their home working environment. Each working from home Team Member was provided with a working from home guide. This has worked extremely well and has proven popular with most Team Members too. Managers then continue to check in and monitor wellbeing.
For those Team Members whose roles are best conducted within their place of work, we have implemented the following:
• Limited all visitors and non-essential contractors attending our distributioncentres and branch network.
• At the request of our customers, recommenced face to face meetings, thishas been done by all our field based team members completing a personalrisk assessment, attending a 1-2-1 with their line manager to talk throughcontrol measures and in understanding customer specific site guidelinesduring this time.
• Maintaining a min. 2m safe distance
• Phased return plans to our office spaces, allowing any team member facingchallenges working from home the priority allocation, followed by team phase allocations using desks clearly marked out to ensure continued socialdistancing and safe spaces.
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
8
• Provided our DC staff with their own Radio Frequency equipment, replacingthe previous regime of sharing equipment.
• Enhanced sick pay and introduced temperature checking for our peopleattending workplaces.
• Zones/Bubbles – Team Members are encouraged to remain within theirdesignated zones, and use only the stairs, kitchens, and toilets closest tothem. This will become enhanced with one-way systems and site guidelinesenforced as team members look to return to office locations. Our distributionand branch network arrangements remain in place.
• Introduced a quarantine for customer returns to our WDC, minimising risks of cross contamination.
• Internal post has been stopped and correspondence must be scanned, or e-mailed, deposit sites for external outgoing mail and external have beenestablished.
• Designated spaces have been set aside for any team member who may feelunwell - where they will be asked for details of where they are stationed andif they have for some reason travelled outside of their work zone.
• We continue to provide regular, clear guidance regarding isolation procedureand self-isolation. This has been supported using our team member supportprogram partners (EAP and Medicash).
• Restricted business travel and no overseas business travel.
• Our field sales teams will conduct meetings with our customers in agreementwith their site guidelines and utilising all forms of communication and visitswhere safe to do so. Dynamic risk assessment at individual level have beenestablished to allow a continued review of customer needs, any change inteam member personal needs and government guideline changes.
• Manager toolkits have been established to aid them in supporting their teammembers to include but not limited to best practice, hints and tips as well assupport mechanisms.
Multi-skilling During our departmental risk assessment process, we looked at each department and highlighted the critical roles. For each additional role we have identified at least two people as back-ups for the role and carried out training as required and developed written procedures too.
HR Support Whilst we have made many changes to our workplace and changed the way some of our Team Members work, we have been mindful at every step of the way to provide a safe place of work. We have also installed checks and balances to ensure we maintain trust and confidence with our staff. This has been supported by Covid specific risk assessments in all key areas of our organization. Additionally, we have run an enterprise wide survey with confidence levels in the support being provided at c. 90+%.
We have guidance in place for when a Team Member considers attending work even though they may have been exposed to the virus – this includes enhanced sick pay for those with less than 1 years’ service and also those who may still be serving their probationary period. We have also introduced a Salary Advance scheme to help those in financial difficulties.
We have insisted that Team Members follow guidelines on hygiene, particularly handwashing – entry to our facilities is only permitted after washing hands.
Team Member holidays – we have instructed that Team Members take all pre-booked annual leave as normal and that they should continue to keep their annual leave bookings proportionately throughout the year.
We have set up several advice and reporting inboxes and set out clear guidelines for when self-isolation is necessary.
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
9
We have placed additional focus on team member wellbeing with the provision of a confidential Employee Assistance Line and a SharePoint with resources to support those who are finding things difficult. All managers are encouraged to have regular check in calls to support team members.
Key Contact
Alice Herring HR Director [email protected]
IT / Technology Support Our main considerations initially have been supporting as many people as possible to be able to work from home. We have increased our corporate broadband capacity from 100mb to 500mb and increased the number of VPN accounts to provide secure access to our network from home from 500 to 1000. We implemented split tunneling to reduce the load through the VPN network and we have widened the working hours and flexibility of working hours to boost capacity of this key team.
We still need to see some people physically, so we have ensured these interactions follow the highest hygiene standards and we provide PPE for each IT team member.
More customers than ever are relying more on our online solutions. We have well developed web trading capabilities serving more than 10,000 customers. We offer a public website www.cromwell.co.uk, a B2B version of this site with additional features and EDI trading too. We have developed online training videos to help customers and our own Sales teams to support customers to transition to this easy way of ordering from us.
Our B2B and EDI solutions allow you to see your specific pricing and product range and includes considerable controls and reporting functionality to help you control costs and reduce your overall spend. For support with this contact your account manager or emailing [email protected].
Key Contact
Patrick Milenuszkin Chief Digital Officer [email protected]
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
10
Finance Our cash position remains strong. We are part of WW Grainger which has a solid A rating with both Standard & Poor’s & Moody’s Investors Service. Our financial controls are designed to work irrespective of remote working.
We are monitoring payment terms closely and will deal with any requests on a case by case basis. Our accounts receivable / payable teams are working from home and are available as normal. We are committed to acting responsibly and paying our suppliers to terms and as is normal practice in advance for certain safety products.
Key Contact
Jason Steward CFO [email protected]
Internal & External Communications
Our Incident Response Team meet twice a week and our Product Team meet daily. We communicate to all colleagues regularly, via email and line manager cascade. We have set-up a dedicated page on our intranet with all communications and the frequently asked questions and answers which is updated on an ongoing basis. We have published dedicated email addresses for any questions not currently answered by our Q&A and to report any colleagues who are feeling unwell or self-isolating.
We have maintained external contact with customers via email and through our Sales, Service and Vending team members. We have also kept our local MP’s informed.
Compliance, Legal and Insurance
Compliance As we continue to source alternative vital products to help key businesses, we will ensure full product compliance remains in place. New Safety Data Sheets will be made available, as well as any technical data sheets applicable. Being able to multi source is at the heart of our organisation and will ensure we can keep industries running and people safe. Cromwell will continue to have a highly ethical supply chain throughout this process ensuring all laws and regulations are complied with. There are numerous fake products in the market and as members of the British Safety Industry Federation Registered Supplier Scheme you can be assured that our products are genuine and comply with all laws and regulations.
Safety and Health We follow the guidance on containment, delay and mitigation measures by Public Health England and the World Health Organisation. We continue to support our colleagues with a range of measures including identifying and protecting the most vulnerable, increased hygiene and cleaning, reduced business travel and visitors, flexible working and working from home and other social distancing actions and provision of PPE. We have also carried out workplace risk assessments as well as people risk assessments and modified our normal working procedures in all roles that interact with our customers to ensure the safety of both customers and colleagues. We have also developed various scenarios including if colleagues are taken ill or impacted by track and trace and briefed these out to the relevant people.
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
11
Data Integrity & Privacy All data continues to be protected in line with our employee and customer privacy policies. Additional requirements for team member health data will only be used to prioritise the safeguarding of employees' health and safety needs. No additional personal data is being obtained or shared regarding our customers or suppliers, and all IT safeguards remain in place.
Contracts COVID-19 could prove challenging in terms of contractual obligations, with that in mind the legal team will continue to work with customers and suppliers over the coming weeks/months. Cromwell remains committed to all its customers in terms of delivering their requirements whilst working with the Government restrictions and guidelines. We have also reviewed all our leases to understand risks and liabilities.
Insurance Working with our insurers we have $1m of coverage for business interruption, clean-up and PR expenses related to communicable disease if the disease is present at one of our locations. All other insurance policies remain in place.
Key Contacts
Justin Clarke General Counsel [email protected]
Toni Johnson Compliance Director & DPO [email protected]
Cyber Security Cyber Security Cromwell remains focused on all aspects of Cyber Security and have taken additional steps recently to safeguard our infrastructure. Including but not limited to:
• Deploying Crowdstrike advanced Malware software on all computers and servers.
• Implementing Multi-factor Authentication.
• Working with Grainger’s Managed Security Service Provider tocollaborate over computer log analysis, detection, and forensics. This willallow quicker identification and responses.
• Deployed Rapid7 allowing us to scan and identify security vulnerabilitieson our endpoint and servers. This will allow patching and anyvulnerabilities are remediated.
• Deployed PatchEngine which enables us to automate the deployment ofsoftware patches for our operating systems and applications. This allowsthem to keep updated.
• Phishing notifications due to increased online scams and phishingattempts. Constant awareness to all team members.
Key Contact
Dharmendra Pabari European Cyber Security Manager [email protected]
IDCOM020/C
COVID-19 Recovery Plan
12
Performance Monitoring
We have robust performance metrics in place including Our People (# confirmed cases, # self-isolating, #working from home), Service (CES, NPS, CSAT, DTP), Inventory (Instock %, Vending line fill %/# skus).
At customer level we can provide Key Service Metrics (DTP, Line fill, instock %, #skus out of stock, alternatives) and if you use our B2B web platform, additional reporting of spend and cost saving ideas.
Speak to your account manager if you would like to receive this information.
Impact so far Since the start of the pandemic we feel fortunate to have had only one confirmed case but have had just under 102 team members self-isolating, some of whom were symptomatic. Most people who can are working from home.
Any Questions? Key Contacts
Elaine Barnes Chief Customer Officer [email protected]
Toni Johnson Compliance Director & DPO [email protected]
IDCOM020/C