The dramatic spread of COVID-19 has disrupted countless lives, communities, and businesses worldwide. Organizations around the world are coming together to find innovative ways to minimize the impact of workforce well-being and limit the disruption to their business operations. Tencent is no exception. As a leading technology company with headquarters in China and offices in 16 countries, Tencent sets all employees’ health and safety as the top priority. Since the first reported cases, Tencent has taken a proactive, employees-first approach to ensure that the spread of COVID-19 is mitigated and the disruption to business operations is kept at a minimum.
Facing such an unprecedented global pandemic, there is hardly any previous experience to pull from. Tencent rapidly formed a cross-functional responding team and turned into remote working mode. We strategically decided to use a phased return-to-work approach in China while we are still facing enormous challenges – travel restrictions within China and worldwide, insufficient protective supplies, potential exposure risk of close contact in the office, financial burden on the company, etc.
In an effort to help decision-makers of our valuable partners to make meaningful relief, we summarized this document with experiences, lessons learnt and toolkits.
Together, we can be stronger after this!
Our Guiding Principles of Responding to COVID-19 as A Company
Six Key Measures to Ensure A Safe Workplace
Measure One: Phased Return-To-Work Approach
1.During outbreak:
2.Post the peak:
Measure Two: Comprehensive quarantine policy and enforcement
To mitigate any potential risks, we designed a comprehensive list of scenarios where a mandatory 14 days self-quarantine needs to take place before returning to work with a confirmed ok health condition.
Measure Three: Practicing Precautionary Measures
Measure Four: Promoting Social Distancing
Measure Five: Health Check-in
To understand our employees’ health situation timely and accurately, we built a regular check-in survey. The survey submission will generate a pass that allows employees to enter the office in China if their health condition being claimed ok. If a person is exhibiting symptoms or potential symptoms, a required quarantine will kick in. To protect employees’ privacy, we carefully reviewed applicable local health regulations and data privacy laws to ensure that the balance between public health and employee privacy was achieved.
Measure Six: Continuous COVID-19 Education & Reminders
Closure and Reflections
Every day we face new challenges and conflicting factors when making decisions. When we go down the rabbit hole, we always remind ourselves of our principles - our employees are our most valuable assets and we place their well-being as our first priority.
Working from home doesn’t mean that things will slow down and be suspended. When employees are involved to help the community, schools, other businesses and the whole world, they are motivated and even more committed to our core company values - “Value for Users, Tech for Good”. Countless people are working nonstop searching for medical supplies, expanding Cloud bandwidth, organizing little but meaningful logistical details to ensure our employees' well-being.
Reacting to a crisis like this can truly test an organization’s agility. As a company with over 60,000 employees worldwide and a set of internal decision-making processes, many decisions have been made in a more agile way. Employees rely on leaders and managers at all levels to take actions and set the tone. Our core leadership team, including our founders, C-suite executives and key business leaders, all lead by example and work tirelessly to do the right thing for our company, our employees and our communities. During these trying times, it is important that we remain optimistic and resilient while relying on our guiding principles to ensure the highest levels of success and employee well-being.
While there are still a lot of unknowns ahead of us, we are confident that together, we can be stronger after this.