Coronavirus has gone from being a local topic, to regional to a national topic – and remains the sole topic at Geely Holding where over 6000 people work in the Group’s global headquarters in Hangzhou, China.
When Coronavirus first came to light in early January 2020, Geely Holdings executive management established a crisis working team and put forward a plan to protect the Group’s 120,000 global employees and its business activities. In the first weeks of February the Group worked with local and national governments to delay the return to work and also staggered the return of employees into three phases. By March 1st all off Geely’s facilities across China had been put back into action; producing, designing and developing Geely vehicles for consumers across the globe.
Geely’s Crises Team came together ahead of the February 10th return to work date for the first returnees to the headquarters. Strict protocols were put in place, all business trips have been automatically cancelled and all guests have been refused entry.
Today, all employees entering into the headquarters must first undergo temperature testing on visual screens that highlight any hotspots – anyone with a fever must be sent to isolation and medical teams alerted. To ease congestion within the main buildings, clock in and clock out machines have been moved to the exterior of the building for the short term, allowing our employees to move in and out of the building with relative speed and convenience.
Employees that drive into the headquarters have to have their temperature taken too, in addition their vehicles have to drive over sanitized mats that remove bacteria from the underside of the vehicle, and then during the day their cars will have the door handles sanitized by security teams.
Hand sanitizer has been introduced at the entrance and at all major traffic points, making it easy and highly convenient to continually wash hands during the day. Initially the Group restricted the use of elevators but have since introduced maximum limits on the number of occupants and also introduced hand sanitizer and tissues for those pressing the buttons.
Once in the headquarters all employees are given new face masks every 8 hours and are encouraged to keep their mouth and nose covered at all times. Floor supervisors also conduct temperature checks on employees twice a day. Large meetings have been cancelled and video or teleconferencing has replaced face to face communications.
Even queuing has come under scrutiny; we ask that employees maintain a 1-meter distance when queuing to use office microwaves or other facilities.
The same strict protocols have been rolled out to all of Geely’s facilities across China where over 60,000 employees are working day-to-day. To date, Geely has returned to full production with no cases of Coronavirus within Geely showcasing that despite the strict measures in place we are working hard to stem the spread of the virus.
Besides getting back to work, Geely has been dedicated to supporting the prevention and control of the new Coronavirus outbreak.
Immediately after news of the outbreak became public Geely cooperated with the Li Shufu Public Welfare Foundation to establish a special 200 million RMB fund to support the prevention and control of the Coronavirus epidemic. The fund have been distributing urgently needed medical supplies including masks, disinfectants, medical goggles, and ventilators to affected areas around the world.
Geely’s strategically invested green mobility service, CaoCao set up an emergency fleet providing free mobility services to residents and front line workers in quarantined Wuhan.
The Group’s subsidiary brand Geely Auto set aside 370 million RMB to develop healthy vehicles that will help to remove harmful elements including bacteria and viruses from within vehicles. Geely Auto also donated 50 MPVs equipped with newly developed Intelligent Air Purification System to front line medical workers.