A message from NEC Australia’s CEO regarding coronavirus (COVID-19)
Dear Customer,
For more than 120 years globally and 50 years in Australia, NEC has worked tirelessly to support our customers. This value is critical as we face the difficult challenge of responding to coronavirus (COVID-19), which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has now declared a pandemic.
As a valued NEC customer, your health and safety are our major priorities.
As you are aware the COVID-19 pandemic is escalating globally and impacting how we all operate and manage our businesses and lives day to day.
At NEC Australia, we provide critical services to customers like yourselves.
With both the health of our people, our customers and society in mind, we wish to provide you an update on the revised measures we have been preparing for, trialling and implementing to cope with and/or limit the spread of the virus, whilst continuing to maintain an outstanding level of delivery and customer service.
Below are some of the simple steps we are asking staff to implement to help combat the spread of the disease:
- Avoid close contact with people with cold or flu-like illnesses
- Cover coughs and sneezes with disposable tissues or clothing
- Stay home if unwell
- Wash hands for at least 20 seconds with water and soap and dry them thoroughly or alternatively hand sanitiser;
- before eating or handling food
- after using the bathroom
- after coughing, sneezing, blowing your nose or wiping children’s noses
- after caring for people who are ill.
Greetings
Consider how we greet one another. Please do not be offended if our staff decline a handshake.
Meetings & Events
We encourage you to minimise the amount of face-to-face interactions with our staff wherever possible. Rather than doing things in person, please make use of video conferencing capability for meetings you have. NECA has access to Skype (or alternative meeting platforms) and is happy to book these meetings if this helps. If you do need to engage with people in person, please try to limit the number of invites to the meeting. It is important to note that we will be asking clients to complete a pre-screening questionnaire in advance of the meeting, to determine if the individual attendees are approved to enter the site.
We will also refrain from either hosting or attending business events where there is the potential for a large amount of people to congregate in close contact.
Travel
The company has now implemented a suspension of Domestic and International travel relating to work duties for NECA staff.
In special or specific cases International or Domestic “work related” travel may be approved.
Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
NEC Australia has been providing 24x7, 365 day support to numerous customers in Australia for many years and takes pride in our ability to continuously support our customers.
We have an up-to-date BCP process, which aligns to our global BCP processes. Planned tests continue to be undertaken across different departments to ensure that our processes are satisfactory and deliver the required outcomes.
Many of our staff already operate remotely. We continue to work with these staff members to understand potential impacts and mitigating factors. Our processes are robust, but we are planning and re-testing these to ensure our staff understand them and to tweak them as we see fit.
Staff Communication
We release regular communication to staff on the outbreak, how best to manage this and any support required in relation to the outbreak. The updates focus on the following specific areas:
- What is Coronavirus?
- Health & Wellbeing Advice
- Travel & Public Transport
- Work & Business Continuity
- Customer Communication
- Day to Day Procedure Reminders
- Useful Links
Government Updates
We continue to maintain a vigilant watch on updates from the Australian and State and Territory Governments which includes monitoring health and travel websites for status changes daily.
If there are specific requirements that you expect from NEC in interacting and engaging with your staff, please let us know so that we can plan and communicate this with them. We understand that these may change as the pandemic and Government announcements change and we encourage you to maintain clear and open lines of communication with us. We trust this meets your expectations and requirements in the delivery of services to you.
Based on current guidance and our own standards and practices, we remain open for business, fully operational and are committed to continuously providing you with outstanding delivery of services.
Although the landscape continues to change, we remain steadfast in our support and will continue to closely monitor the situation and evaluate additional measures as needed.
Thank you as always for being a valued NEC client. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact your NECA representative.
Please read my latest customer update regarding Coronavirus (Covid-19).
Yours sincerely,
Mitsuhiro Murooka
Managing Director & CEO - ANZ
NEC Australia Pty Ltd