Safety protocols that can help put clients and staff at ease

How can you acknowledge and adjust your office and your communication to deal with concerns related to the pandemic? During a recording of the MDRT Podcast in June, MDRT members share changes they are making and strategies for showing that health and safety are a top priority.

John Enright: We’ve made some pretty significant changes. Being in a 15-story building, there’s a parking garage in the building down below, and we have a team member meet the client there. If they’re coming into the office, we offer for them to be able to wear a mask, of course, in the meeting, as well as offer for myself to wear a mask in the meeting. But we leave it up to them. For the most part, they have chosen for neither me nor them to wear a mask. And then we do space our conference room out so there’s plenty of room between each of us, but those are really the biggest steps we’ve taken. We still offer folks to meet in person or to meet via Zoom. And the majority are still meeting via Zoom.

Sarah Hogan: I think we’re probably similar. We’ve got hand sanitizer pumps everywhere. We’re trying to get some installed, like the ones in hospitals that are automatic so you don’t have to touch them. Our boardroom is big enough that we can space out and get a good 3 meters, 4 meters maybe from one end to the other. So that shouldn’t be a problem. For the smaller meeting rooms, we’ve got these perspex screens in with a little document hole in the bottom to pass things through. And then we’ve got a meeting room without one. We’ve drafted up a document to send out to clients if they’re coming in to say, “This is what we’re doing. We will offer to wear a mask, gloves and you the same. We will wipe everything down once you’ve gone, and before you come in.”

And just telling them really the steps that we’ve taken to make them feel safe. I very rarely go to a client’s house anymore, but I know some advisors in our firm do. So we’ve also tried to implement something similar to send to a client. So, “If one of our advisors is coming into your house or into your home, this is what we expect you to do. We’re expecting you to clean down the surfaces, to keep the two-meter distance, to keep ventilation through the house. Let us know if you want us to wear a mask,” all these types of things, with something for them to sign, to say that they’ve done it because we don’t want to put our guys at risk any more than we want to put the clients at risk.

So I think it’s just being sensible using the hand sanitizer as much as possible. And if you’ve got any sort of symptoms at all, you just stay away.

John P. Enright is a 21-year MDRT member from Syracuse, New York. Sarah Helen Hogan, ACII, is a four-year MDRT member from Leigh, United Kingdom. Hear more in the MDRT Podcast: