Forging ahead
Chief executives chart a path forward in uncertain times
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses across industries to think not only about how they react to crises in the immediate term, but how they may need to position themselves to remain viable going forward. For some it is a matter of making some relatively minor accommodations, while others are looking at fundamental change.
Texas Inc. asked some local chief executives about the path forward for their companies.
Dr. David Callender, CEO of Memorial Hermann Hospital System As told to Gwendolyn Wu
Q: How is Memorial Hermann preparing in the long-term for the effects of the pandemic?
A: We deal with infectious diseases all the time. So there’s nothing new that we’re having to learn in terms of caring for patients who are afflicted with COVID-19 now. We’re using personal protective equipment in a different way than we typically would, but certainly in a way that we’re comfortable using it. Not much about our practices have changed, the relative frequency of use of the practices have been adjusted because of the prevalence of COVID-19. We expect that to remain the case as long as we’re dealing with a pretty high level of COVID-19 disease in the population, until we have a vaccine that can bring down that risk.
Q: What about dealing with patients?
A: One of the most significant challenges for us will be to convince patients who have something other than COVID-19 that it’s actually safe to come to the hospital to see their doctor or provider. We’ll have to be able to demonstrate that all of these protective measures are in place and working. The convincing is going to take time .
Q: What’s Memorial Hermann’s outlook as we face a recession?
A: Our focus on COVID-19 and our limiting of elective cases providing the other sorts of care that we typically would provide has reduced the revenue associated with the provision of care. It’s more expensive to care for COVID-19 patients because of the supplies, the processes, procedures that we use to limit the risk of infection. We’re like everybody else in terms of suffering.
Q: When you last spoke to the Houston Chronicle about your vision for 2021, you mentioned your top priorities were driving down care costs and improving efficiency. How has a pandemic affected that?
A: Obviously, while we’ve been focused on COVID-19, we’ve narrowed our effort accordingly. But it has continued: thinking about how we make our care most efficient, how we link together all of the people and resources in the most effective way to deliver care is a point of ongoing focus for us.
Now that we’ve started again to provide care for patients with needs other than COVID-19 we’ll certainly continue the broader effort to make our care as efficient as we can, reduce costs “Like anything that goes in cycles, we expect it will come back.” Chris Hanslik, chairman of BoyarMiller law firm where we can, again making sure that the resources that we’re using are used efficiently to generate the best possible health outcomes.
Chris Hanslik, chairman of Boyar Miller law firm As told to Nancy Sarnoff
Q: Everyone in your company had been working from home primarily, but you recently decided to reopen your office for those who wanted to come back to work. How did you prepare?
A: I’ve been reading anything I can get my hands on about best practices and what other businesses were doing, but I went a step further and retained a medical consultant, an actual ER doctor who has formed a company called Formula Med, to consult with me on best practices
we can implement. He met with me in our office and gave recommendations about how to handle high vs. low traffic areas, items in our kitchen and coffee bar areas, offices, secretarial stations, conference rooms. We walked the whole floor and developed a plan and guidelines for people to follow.
Q: Can you elaborate on some of those policies?
A: Part of the plan for the month of May is no outside visitors to the office. We’re limiting seating capacity in conference rooms and in our lunchroom and removing chairs so only the chairs available are the ones in the room. We’re going to provide hand sanitizer at everyone’s desk and in the common areas so it’s readily available. And I don’t know if people will use them vs. a mask but one of our client’s pivoted
part of their business and started making face shields. We ordered 50 from them for our employees if they don’t want to wear a mask. If you’re coming and going in the common areas in the building a face covering will be required, but at your workstation or in your office it is not.
Q: What’s happening on the client side?
A: As far as client work goes, we saw a drop in our revenue in April across the board. Where we saw the biggest drops were in corporate work and to a lesser extent real estate-related work. But the corporate M&A practice, I mean, no one was buying and selling companies. All that’s shut down. That’s where we saw the biggest impact. Like anything that goes in cycles, we expect it will come back. In our firm, the litigation group maintained kind of a steady load of work.
Thad Hill, CEO of Calpine As told to L.M. Sixel
Q: Where has been the biggest coronavirus-related financial hit for Calpine?
A: It’s been very modest, I’m talking single digit percentages. We’re having to spend more money on our plants because we had to requisition a lot of supplies, we had to get ready, work on outages is taking a little longer. We’re testing everyone for temperature. I’d say there are a little more stranded costs across the company as we’re doing this.
Retail customers aren’t consuming all the power we thought they would and we’re selling that back to the market and we’re losing a little money on that. So, I would say there’s no one big spot but there’s several little spots.
Q: How long do you think the virus will linger on the business?
A: Three things have to happen. One is when can we get back to our normal operating profile, essentially getting people back to work. Another element of that is we want our customers to be happy and healthy and economically sound. We hope people can get back to work.
And the third thing is we want power demand. Power demand has definitely come off about 5 percent and that will likely come back when the economy reopens.
Q: How have you handled staffing?
A: About two-thirds of Calpine’s employees have been working from home since the pandemic began. The remainder work at the company’s power plants and have been going to work everyday to keep the lights on. Calpine launched a series of safety measures to keep them safe and the company plans to use some of the same practices as it slowly reopens its offices.
Q: What are your plans for ramping up?
A: In the Houston area we have three offices and we’re going to have a soft opening on May 18 and we expect we’ll bring about 20 percent of people back. It’s not random or one out of every five count off but for employees whose tasks require more collaboration. We’re cleaning the offices, moving the chairs into conference rooms so no one can sit too close together and temperature checking every day when they come in. We will also be requiring masks to go to the restroom or going on the elevator.
If this works, we’ll bring another group of people back in the middle of June who we