At the beginning of March, the Covid-19 crisis was but a foreign occurrence in distant lands. Never did we imagine it would come through the front door of our head office in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, courtesy of an Illovo employee who had been in direct contact with the man we now know to be "Patient Zero". With Illovo's "Patient 1" now in self-quarantine and those with whom contact was made in the office in a similar position, there was an agonising wait for the National Institute for Communicable Diseases' first "transmission" test results.
In the meantime, we had to quickly bring our staff up to speed, close our offices as a precautionary measure and arrange for SA's first Covid-related "deep clean" of our building.
On receipt of a negative test result, Illovo's Patient 1 continued to self-quarantine, while all secondary contacts were free to continue as normal, but only within the strict protocols being adopted worldwide.
We speedily constituted a Covid response team with key role players in the business to co-ordinate and manage all the communication and developments and implement the preventative and response protocols, and "Covid-proof" much of our work environment.
In addition to creating awareness about the virus through a massive internal communication programme, our responses were strongly guided by our government classification as an essential food producer. Of primary importance was the safety of our people and their loved ones, and, however hard this was, adopting social distancing and other preventative protocols in our factories and farms.
It was imperative to ensure we delivered safely made products to our customer base, that our comprehensive business continuity programme focused on keeping supply chains and logistics operating as normal, and that we worked extremely hard to prevent any material impact on our ability to manufacture the essential products - sugar, and alcohol for sanitiser production. We are grateful, despite the challenges, for what this has meant for the rural economies and agriculture jobs in KwaZulu-Natal during this testing time.
It has been remarkable to observe some of the achievements and the ingenuity that emerged within the organisation. We were able to send the entire head office and other employees to work successfully and effectively from home despite grave concerns regarding our IT systems, previously an unthinkable proposition. People from all levels of the organisation demonstrated remarkable proactive leadership and drive to deliver what's needed and more. They created novel solutions to some of the limitations; supported the up-weighted communication agenda and navigated the evolving regulations. The true "can do" spirit is alive and well - "we make a plan". It is humbling and inspiring. I'm certain this is a shared experience across the country.
In times of uncertainty it is important to collaborate, and we reached out to other companies to share ideas, which fast-tracked our own responsiveness. All these good things we must continue in the future.
What does the future hold? One thing is certain: we will be fully prepared for any future pandemic or health and safety crisis. We expect the economic environment to be under severe pressure as a consequence of the lockdown, and very dynamic. Therefore we have to adapt our business strategy implementation to stay ahead and actively materialise opportunities uncovered by this crisis.
For our business, the focus will be on evolving ways of working, maintaining the agility of decision-making, leveraging technology more and, crucially, focusing relentlessly on cash-flow optimisation.
Covid is a massive disrupter. It forced us to leapfrog many aspects of our ways of working and brought to bear new opportunities. These have to be developed and refined into our new vision of a post-Covid future.
• Mahlare is MD of Illovo Sugar (SA)
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