Along with the rest of the world, we have been closely monitoring the dynamic situation related to COVID-19 and are doing our best to help mitigate the impact. As always, the well-being of our employees, our customers and their families is our top priority. We are taking multiple steps to minimize health risks to our teammates, our clients and our communities, including:
- Making sure all Ruppert team members are practicing proper personal hygiene measures, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- Instructing our team members to stay home if they show any symptoms of illness and to follow CDC guidelines regarding testing and self-quarantine.
- Implementing new social distancing protocols to maintain a distance of at least six feet whenever possible (e.g. teleworking when possible, outdoor meetings with separation for our production teams, and video conferences for office team meetings)
- Adopting new proactive, daily cleaning/disinfecting measures for our trucks and branch offices
- Adjusting our production schedules, work weeks, and work hours as needed to help our team adjust to new challenges (e.g. school cancellations and elevated absenteeism due to sick leave)
- While we traditionally encourage our production team managers to meet face-to-face with our customers whenever possible to ensure we are meeting service expectations, for the coming weeks we are encouraging our team members to avoid unnecessary face-to-face contact with customers and to primarily communicate via phone calls, email messages, or other electronic means.
- We have also instructed our teams to coordinate with and be supportive of our clients’ COVID-19 mitigation strategies. (e.g. at all senior living facilities, unless directed otherwise by our customers, we are instructing our teams to avoid going into any of these facilities to service interior courtyards, use restrooms, meet with property managers, or anything else)
- If you have any new protocols you would like our teams to observe (e.g. avoid interior courtyards, cancel a visit, or alternatively, to pull a project forward if tenants are temporarily off-site), please let your primary Ruppert point of contact know as soon as possible.
- If we can help with any temporary services (e.g. disinfecting handrails, doorknobs, etc.), please let us know and we will try to support with whatever bandwidth we have available.
If there is anything else we can do, please do not hesitate to contact your primary Ruppert representative. While we are optimistic this will be a temporary situation, we will continue to communicate with transparency and act responsibly to ensure the health and well-being of our team members, partners and customers. We wish you and your families good health and good spirits in these uncertain times.