Just what you want to read, yet another article in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 story clamoring on about the bleak short-term travel outlook and fueling stock market downturns worldwide. Regardless of any statistics about its contagiousness or lethality, the fact remains that it is shutting down flights, cruises, and the global flow of commercial goods.

Just as manufacturing companies and airlines are taking precautions, now is as good a time as ever to review your employee and guest safety protocols. This means more than just a one-off bulletin instructing associates to be on the lookout for symptoms of the coronavirus, but having a deeper conversation about the dangers of coming to work when ill as well as making health and safety training a core part of your corporate culture through ongoing training.

Living in Toronto which became an epicenter for the 2003 SARS outbreak and has already seen its first case of COVID-19, I have witnessed firsthand how a metropolis responds – both rationally and frantically – to the emergence of an airborne pathogens. Of note, several cases for the former occurred due to interactions between doctors or nurses and patients with numerous others internationally resulting from communication between flight attendants and their passengers. These incidents highlight the dire role that industries hinging upon direct human contact – including hospitality – play in the transference of diseases as these microbes jump from customer to staff then to other staff or back to customer.

Many of the training procedures put in place to combat this malevolent flow nearly two decades ago following SARS still apply today, but sadly some lagging elements of hotel workplace culture hinder us from realizing the ideal response. Namely, many frontline team members within our organizations are afraid for their jobs and are often not given the proper support and mentorship structures to feel like they can discuss personal problems openly.

In other words, in a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ work environment, many problems are bottled up after they occur and not talked about with peers so that the right solution can be discerned. As this relates to the coronavirus or any other flu-like pathogen that happens to slither its way through your four walls, when associates display clear signs of an infection or feel palpably sick, they should not immediately fear for their jobs or any other loss of pay by staying home.

This anxiety is what causes them to push through the weariness and come into the office despite being knowingly contagious, thereby making the rest of your team vulnerable. This anxiety is also what causes employees or managers to suppress other hazardous encounters, such as sexual harassment in the workplace, which can all inevitably lead to disengagement from the job, lower productivity or decreased talent retention.

While there’s always the risk of having your reputation be severely tarnished due to the reporting of a COVID-19 event at your specific hotel, this broader implication addressed above is nevertheless critical as part of the development of a safety culture – one that values and listens to the concerns of all its team members so that they feel empowered to perform at their best and to bring potentially great ideas forward to their superiors without immediate rejection.

As the coronavirus is still front page news to thus ensure that you’ll have your team’s full attention when you bring the matter forward, now is the right time to announce your short-term efforts to bolster safety response protocols as part of a continuous program to improve your team’s health. This starts by letting every associate know that it’s okay to stay home if they are sick. Conversely, it also means manager and supervisor retraining to ensure that they know how to talk to subordinates who may be ill so that the latter parties don’t feel guilty or frightened by not making their shift.

Beyond this, I hope that the coronavirus subsides as quickly as possible so that it does not continue to affect conventions, flights, vacations or any other travel-related business. To this end and to ensure we don’t enter the next full-blown economic recession due to mass hysteria, we hoteliers must all do our part to prevent the spread of this virus, and this starts with updating your staff training.