Letter from the President and CEO: COVID-19 and Ingeniux

We’re continuing to closely monitor the situation with the coronavirus outbreak and adapt our policies accordingly.  I have a few updates to share with you today.

Walla Walla Office Closure:  As of Monday, March 23, the Walla Walla office will be temporarily closed and all Walla Walla staff will work remotely.  While there are still no confirmed COVID-19 cases in Walla Walla, we are taking steps to insure the well-being of our staff in Walla Walla and prevent possible contagion within the office.

Working Remotely: With the entire company now working remotely, we want to insure that everyone has the materials and support they need to be productive in their remote work environment.   In that regard:

• Best Practices for Working Remotely: I have been meeting with the Response Team, HR, and department managers to discuss best practices and recommendations for working remotely.  Riley is compiling a best practices guide and will be circulating that shortly. 
• Home Office Environment : For those of you who are newly remote workers, you may be coping with a less than ideal home office environment.  We recognize that some people will benefit from being able to take things from the Seattle and WW offices for their use in their at-home work environment, including
  • Monitors
  • Keyboards
  • Mouse
  • Phone (the office phones can be plugged into an ethernet connection anywhere and will apparently just work)
  • Desk Chair

If you wish to take home any of your equipment from your current workspace, please feel free to do so.  (Please do not take supplies or equipment from other people’s workspaces.)  You will need to send an email to helpdesk@ingeniux.com letting them know what you are taking home, so we can inventory and track it.   For those Seattleites interested, we have a few IKEA desks in the Seattle office that are disassembled and can be taken for home use.  Again, please send an email to helpdesk@ingeniux.com and we’ll reserve them for your use on a first-come first-serve basis.  (Please Note: the Seattle Tower is key card access only.)

Productivity: in the best of times it can be challenging to work from home.  Now we have to deal with unexpected demands on our time, whether that is child care because of school closures, care for infants, pets, or family members because care providers are no longer available, personal health care, or just the daily challenges of getting to stores and making appointments.  We recognize that this has and will continue to impact productivity.  Not everyone is going to be able to perform at the same level, or during the same timeframe, as we did prior to office and school closures.  We’ve been discussing how to address this:

• First, it’s important that we all acknowledge impacts to our productivity and work-product deliveries.  This is critical for planning and managing expectations.  If you have to reduce your work load and hours because of your situation, please share that with your manager.
• You may need to change your working times to accommodate other obligations in the home or in your life.  We understand that and encourage it.  If you need to front-load or back-load your work times, please share your plan and schedule with your manager so we can plan and manage accordingly. 
• We understand the need to accommodate schedule flexibility and some loss of productivity during the COVID-19 outbreak.  We have instituted a new PTO policy to accommodate that (see below). 

Coronavirus PTO (CV-PTO):  starting Monday, the company is granting all Ingeniux employees an additional 40 hours of coronavirus-specific PTO.  For the duration of the coronavirus crisis, this PTO can be used to address coronavirus specific work reductions, such as remote work environment issues, child care, personal health care, mental health break, etc.  Starting Monday there will be a new category of OOO called “CV-PTO.”  This will be tracked separately from regular PTO.

A couple of notes here:

• For anyone who needs to take full-time or part-time leave to address extended work hour reduction, please see your manager.
• Should anyone test positive for coronavirus and require extended time off for recovery, the company will grant extended paid sick leave.

Ingeniux Financial Stability:  Today is payday, and a reminder perhaps that many people have recently been laid off and are facing financial uncertainty.  I want to share some information on our company’s current financial health.  For those of you who are newer to the company, some background on our financial history: Ingeniux never took any VC money to start or grow the business.  We’ve grown the company organically, based on customer sales and cash-flow.  One could argue about the relative merits of that approach, but one salient benefit is that it has instilled a culture of financial discipline that has served us well in times of crisis.

Today we are in a very strong financial position as a company:

• We have ample cash reserves in the bank for operating over the next six months
• We have no long-term debt as a company
• We own all of our stock; there are no outside equity holders with control over the company’s future financial decisions
• We have a very strong relationship with our bank and I have recently secured contingency financing should we need it for an extended crisis

Going forward, we can’t say how long this crisis will last and how severe the economic impact will be.  But it’s important that all of you know:  As a company we are committed to keeping people employed and not laying off any of our employees as a result of this crisis. 

How Can You Help?  Customer service is part of our company DNA.  Our success and growth is in no small part due to our willingness and ability to deliver beyond customer expectations, especially in times of crisis.  What does that mean in the current crisis?

• For all of us, this is our time to shine – be timely, proactive and insightful in addressing our customers’ challenges.
• To the extent we do that, we build strong and lasting relationships with our customers and lay the groundwork for future success as a company.
• We are currently engaged on a number of initiatives to deliver solutions and services to our customers at no cost, or reduced costs, to address their needs.
• If a customer or partner asks for help associated with the current crisis, focus on delivering that help in a timely and successful manner.  Just do it.  We’ll worry later about if and how it gets paid for.
• If you have ideas on how we can help our customers, or what we can build as a company to address new challenges in the market, please share those with me and your manager.

Thank you again for all your great work,

Jim