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In January and February 2020, when members of Pennsylvania's Lehigh County Authority (LCA) leadership team heard about the novel coronavirus infecting populations in Asia, we responded with a collective shrug and hung posters reminding employees about covering coughs and handwashing—typical flu‐season stuff. In late February, I attended the Water Environment Federation/AWWA Utility Management Conference in Anaheim, Calif., and was somewhat surprised to see so many masks worn at the airport in California, although there weren't so many at the one in Philadelphia.
The Pandemic Hits Home
In early March, we started communicating more seriously with employees about COVID‐19 and reviewing our Pandemic Response Plan. Still, our overall approach was more watchful than action‐oriented. However, by March 10, 2020, cases started popping up in our area, and employees were becoming more concerned. LCA formed an internal Pandemic Response Team (PRT), and staff began meeting regularly to address employee questions and formulate plans. Immediate steps were taken to order and distribute personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies as well as determine how to quickly deploy new technology to support remote work arrangements for nonoperational employees.
During the next two weeks, our PRT members discussed a wide range of difficult topics, including the potential for employee layoffs, mandatory temperature screenings, employees with children at home because of school closures, how to respond when an employee gets sick, the potential for onsite sequestration of critical employees, and more. By the third week of March, we had implemented broad operational changes, including the following:
Closure of all customer service locations and suspension of collection activities
Universal work‐from‐home arrangements for all nonoperational staff
Total revision of operational staff schedules to limit contact with other employees
Daily “wellness checks” to track employee health and attendance trends
Board of directors meetings moved to a virtual platform
Daily PRT meetings (or less frequently as needed)
Hazard pay for onsite workers
Written protocols for emergency customer site visits
Decision‐making diagrams to address employee illnesses
Increased communication with employees
At the time of this writing in mid‐May, these protocols were still in place, and most of Pennsylvania remains under a “stay‐at‐home” order.
Finding Our Path Forward
We've been adjusting as we go and learning every day. The following missteps, corrections, obstacles, and breakthroughs are some of our most beneficial lessons learned.
Misstep: Waiting too long to communicate
Correction: Over‐communicate in a crisis
My first inclination that we had waited too long to develop our plans was when I received an e‐mail from an employee asking, “What are you waiting for?” Employees were wondering how LCA was planning to protect their health and their jobs, and we hadn't said anything specific yet! From that moment on, the PRT was careful to bring forth every employee question we heard plus news reports of any changes in the situation for full team discussion and response.
As a team, we've gotten better at listening and predicting staff concerns. To manage any rumors and bolster employee confidence in LCA's decision‐making, we began issuing updates to employees at least weekly and held several virtual “town hall” style meetings to provide updates and answer questions. The response has been positive, with employees expressing appreciation for our transparency and communication.
My first inclination that we had waited too long to develop our plans was when I received an e‐mail from an employee asking, “What are you waiting for?”
Misstep: Relying on best‐laid plans
Correction: Document real‐world experience
LCA went into this situation confidently because it had its Pandemic Response Plan on the shelf. We just needed to start using it, right? Unfortunately, we spent several days arguing about what “phase” of the pandemic we were in because our plan didn't really match the pandemic's path or what our federal and state government required. However, we were ahead of the curve because our plan got us going in the right direction, thinking about the issues, and discussing the best path forward. Throughout our challenges, we've diligently documented our decisions and actions, updated them as changes were made, and incorporated flexibility where more was expected. We're especially looking forward to updating the “return‐to‐normal” portion of the plan and hope to have data soon.
Misstep: Too much collaboration
Correction: Crisis management requires decisiveness
Personally, my leadership style is decidedly collaborative. I prefer to receive a lot of feedback, and I often look to build consensus on big decisions before moving forward. For LCA's team of dedicated utility managers, the pressure of leading 160 anxious employees into an uncertain future added stress and unwelcome emotion to our team meetings. A few days into LCA's pandemic response, our PRT meetings started taking on a frustrated (and occasionally loud) tone. I realized that I was causing this dynamic by seeking consensus instead of providing decisive leadership. Since then, I've tried wearing a less familiar “hat” and started limiting the debate and providing more top‐down direction on key issues. Team members still provided honest feedback and discussion, but our meetings became shorter and less anxious. As the crisis evolved, I had to adapt my leadership style to what worked best for our organization.
Misstep: Too much complexity
Correction: Keep decision‐making criteria simple
To date, LCA's most dynamic discussion during the pandemic has focused on how to plan for the potential need to sequester critical employees onsite for weeks at a time. With workers spread across four locations, exactly how could this work? Would we “lock down” all operations and maintenance staff or just treatment plant operators? What do we pay staff who must live onsite versus those who are no longer allowed to report to work? Where will people sleep? What if we need back‐up staffing to deal with an emergency? What if an employee gets sick while living onsite?
These discussions were necessary, but they generated employee anxiety until we could answer the toughest question: When are we implementing the plan? We developed a simple benchmark based on employee illness rates: If a facility's employee illnesses exceeded the target, we would implement the plan. Having this simple rule in place allowed us to focus on the real goal, which was to keep employees healthy!
Obstacle: Process disruptions
Breakthrough: Stop relying on paper
Our operational approaches during the pandemic were focused mostly on employee scheduling, crew isolation protocols, mask supply, and daily sanitation protocols. Otherwise, most other operational and maintenance protocols remained in place and the water kept flowing. However, the remainder of the employee base working from home faced the difficult challenge of learning how to be effective without normal support systems—printers, office supplies, mail, face‐to‐face interactions, signature‐based approval processes, and more. Although the first couple of weeks of working remotely were focused on learning to use unfamiliar technology, as the weeks wore on it became apparent that we had to reduce or eliminate the instances in which a piece of paper controlled the process. This topic is near the top of our “post‐pandemic lessons learned” list for further exploration.
Obstacle: High hopes
Breakthrough: Being kind is important
When we learned that most of our capital projects would grind to a halt because of contractors’ businesses closing under the governor's orders, and that our collections activity would be placed on hold as well as other internal processes throughout the organization, we worried about how to keep all employees busy. We discussed the opportunity for employees to work on less‐urgent projects, such as overhauling our electronic filing system. Now two months into this situation, we aren't making a lot of progress on those items. We've found it's more difficult to collaborate when working from home, and we aren't working as efficiently as normal. But that's OK. During this stressful time, it seems important to allow employees some space, as most are just managing as best they can. I believe this understanding and flexibility will come back to LCA in the future, as employees are grateful that work pressure isn't at the top of their list of worries.
Obstacle: Anxious employees and supervisors
Breakthrough: Identify rock stars!
During this experience, some employees have required more support from supervisors to help them manage stress or to address their dissatisfaction with LCA's decisions. The strain on supervisors to address anxious staff members has been significant, as supervisors are managing their own stress, too. Almost every communication with employees includes reminders about the importance of self‐care and how to reach our Employee Assistance Program for additional, confidential support. Because of the more frequent communication, we've also had the opportunity to hear about our “rock star” employees who bring positivity and innovation to LCA during these challenging times. We're doing our best to record the individual achievements of our awesome team members so we can celebrate them when the time is right.
As our situation unfolded, I can confirm that leadership fundamentals and common sense carried the day.
Back to Basics
Since accepting the position as LCA's chief executive officer in 2015, I've been asked how I like it by friends at other utilities. I normally chuckle and admit the job is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Leaving COVID‐19 aside, the challenges I've faced are somewhat predictable and widely discussed within the AWWA community—issues relating to climate change, drought resilience, aging infrastructure, workforce development, financial capacity, rate affordability, and more.
I was reasonably well prepared to manage these challenges. And while none of my 22 years in the water industry prepared me for the scale of challenges associated with COVID‐19, I did have a framework to make decisions and communicate our path forward. We're not at the end yet and likely will be dealing with the aftermath of this pandemic for years to come, but as LCA's situation unfolded, I can confirm that leadership fundamentals and common sense carried the day. For future leaders facing anything similar, let there be no shortage of communication, empathy, integrity, courage, focus, adaptability, and positivity.
Biography
Liesel M. Gross is chief executive officer of Lehigh County Authority (https://lehighcountyauthority.org), Allentown, Pa.; lieselgross@lehighcountyauthority.org.