Smart Business Magazine, July 2020

28 Smart Business July 2020 This preparation contributed to a relatively seamless transition to a remote workforce when stay at home orders went into effect in March across most of the country and around the world If you would have said to me six months ago that this is the way that your organization will be working it would have been hard to envision Schnur says But we were well prepared and just took it step by step The pandemic has shone a bright light on groups in the company that often dont get a lot of attention When your computer doesnt quite do what you want it to do thats when you Were very focused on the external market and weve rearranged a lot of our manufacturing assets to try to make more materials for medical devices and hand sanitizer components that are so important right now says Schnur There are some other products that we have basically deferred so that we can make more of the stuff people demand Were staying really close to our customers who are in those kinds of fields While the fight against the pandemic continues Lubrizol has also begun the gradual process of returning employees to their work sites We had about 11000 people in our sites globally at the end of February and we pulled that down to about 4200 over a two to three week period Schnur says That number has now increased past 5000 and will continue to rise as safely as it can be done The good news he says is that results thus far have proven there is no need to rush the process We learned that were able to work remotely more readily than we might have ever envisioned Schnur says Each event is an opportunity to learn and update procedures preparation is not designed to anticipate or solve all of the problems you might face in a crisis But when you get into a crisis situation thats when your priorities have to be really clear Schnur says You have to keep going back and asking yourself Are we doing everything we possibly can for our employees for our customers and for our communities At its essence thats what a company is You have to be very clear about what you stand for as a company what your priorities are and stay true to those no matter whats going on in the outside world COVER STORY Lubrizol Corp The real heroes in this whole fight are the medical professionals doctors nurses EMTs everybody thats helping to treat the patients and save so many lives ERIC SCHNUR CHAIRMAN PRESIDENT AND CEO LUBRIZOL CORP ESTABLISH CLEAR PRIORITIES Lubrizol was prepared for COVID 19 It developed a formal pandemic team in the early 2000s and the initiative gained strength following the SARS outbreak of 2003 It has continued to evolve with MERS swine flu Ebola and Zika among other infectious diseases The No 1 priority is to protect the health and safety of our employees Schnur says No 2 is to make sure were able to continuously operate as a company continue to supply our products to our customers and improve the processes we have and the breadth of considerations we take into account