Social distancing will help “flatten the curve” of transmission of the new coronavirus.

By now, you’ve heard all about how social distancing will help prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). It’s a tried and true public health practice that works particularly well for this type of illness.

Why Social Distancing?

As Tomas Pueyo writes in his in-depth blog about why organizations must act quickly to contain the spread of COVID-19, scientists believe that this virus can be spread within 2 meters if somebody coughs. So, if you’re not within 6 feet of an infected individual, your risk of direct exposure is relatively low.

But, you’re still at risk. We also know that the new coronavirus survives up to nine days on surfaces such as metal, ceramics and plastics. That means things like doorknobs, tables or elevator buttons can be terrible infection vectors, causing a steep and sudden curve in cases within a population.

Therefore, the only way to truly reduce the spread of this virus—the only way to “flatten” this curve—is through social distancing. And like many employers, Businessolver is doing just that. We’re keeping our Solvers home as much as possible, for as long as possible until this illness recedes.

Our Response Readiness

Fortunately for us, we were prepared to act quickly when the time came. Namely, we had already developed a preparedness plan in case of an emergency such as this—the Businessolver Continuity and Resiliency Program. A pillar of this program is trust through transparency—complete openness about all the measures we are currently taking and are prepared to take as the situation evolves. This includes:

• Deploying temporary and extended work-from-home practices, including member services.
• Suspending or canceling all Solver business trips.
• Providing Solvers with information and best practices to prevent the spread of illness.
• Reinforcing existing work-from-home security policies and procedures to ensure the highest level of client information security.
• Holding virtual meetings with local and national business leaders and partners to share knowledge on business resiliency.
• Engaging our customers in virtual collaborative events, including our April 30 & May 1 Vision client conference, which will now be held online.

Helping Our Clients

Of course, we are not alone in this effort. Even when it’s business as usual, Solvers are fond of saying that we’re “in it together” with our clients, carriers and other partners.

As a provider of benefits technology and services, we work hard every day to ensure our clients’ members understand their benefits and feel confident in using them. And in stressful times like these, confidence goes a long way.

To that end, we have several features within our technology to help assist in communicating benefit programs and their importance during this time.

• Sofia, our artificial intelligence-enabled personal benefits assistant, is always “on-call” 24/7 to answer questions and help employees with their benefits.
  • We have equipped her with a standard response to questions related to COVID-19 based on CDC best practices. However, clients can also choose to update her responses to reflect client-specific guidance.
  • Additionally, Sofia can relay an important piece of information at the start of a chat or call. This provides employers with a front-and-center opportunity to deliver messages regarding COVID-19 or workplace policies.
• With the configurability of our system, clients can quickly update their Benefitsolver home pages to include important workplace policies during this time or emphasize the use of certain benefits that may be particularly useful, such as telemedicine.
• Lastly, our communication framework within Benefitsolver can be used to send important emails or texts to an entire employee population or segmented to those in highly-impacted regions.

For the latest on Businessolver’s efforts to flatten the curve of coronavirus transmission and to get tips for your own organization, subscribe to the Businessolver blog below. In the meantime, here’s a short video of how Sofia is helping our clients and their members through this stressful—and hopefully brief—period.