PowerDMS: Reflections on Our Pandemic Response

By: Heather Sorensen, Director of Human Resources at PowerDMS

based, and have fail-safes in place. As an Orlando, Florida-based company, we already had crisis plans for hurricanes and 100% remote work capabilities. In some ways, we had been preparing for a crisis for years, but we never imagined the need for a pandemic plan. The good news was, much of our existing crisis planning served as the framework for our COVID-19 response, and my hope is that yours will too. As a friend and family member of first responders, I have a glimpse into the pressures and challenges you face daily serving our communities. I am grateful for your work and hope these reflections and tips on how PowerDMS responded to the pandemic will be of service to you and your agency.

At PowerDMS, we use an internal messaging system called Slack for both one-on-one and non-policy and procedure-related communication. Once COVID-19 hit, we realized our employees were using Slack exponentially more for one-on-one conversations than before, and we had no visibility into what they were saying. As a leadership team, the last thing we wanted was for misinformation to spread or for our employees to start forming narratives about what was happening. We knew we had to take control of the conversation in a way that was visible and transparent to everyone. The first thing we did was create a cadence of communication and posted everything in our own PowerDMS site for our employees to attest to. Because information was changing so quickly, we made sure we only spoke about what we did know and were open and honest about the things we didn't. As leaders, our tendency is not to talk until we know all the facts, but with something as impactful and fast-moving as COVID-19, silence was more dangerous. Being honest about what we didn't know meant our employees didn't need to go out and find answers, but they would receive them as soon as we had them.

As a cloud-based company, we have many tools at our disposal to communicate with our staff, including email, Slack, and PowerDMS. While email and Slack are great communication tools, they weren't the right tool for critical pandemic related communications. We knew we needed visibility into whether or not our employees were reading what we disseminated. We also wanted a one-stop-shop for all things COVID-19, so there were no questions about where to find or reference information. While we have always used PowerDMS for policy updates and dissemination, we quickly realized we

needed to create a COVID-19 folder to host new policies, handwashing training, leadership updates, and more. With our tool, we had documentation and certainty that everyone received the same message because they were electronically signing off on COVID-19 content. Another critical component we considered throughout this process was the frequency and format of our updates. With a predominately millennial workforce, more frequent, yet concise communication was far more effective than a lengthy memo. Consider the different generations represented in each level of your agency and how they best receive information before hitting send. We also noticed that our employees were reading and signing off on policies before I could even send out an announcement. It was clear our employees were hungry for information and had downloaded the PowerDMS mobile app to receive real-time notifications. Mobile capabilities and push notifications are a must when communicating with younger generations.

As leaders, we have to balance dozens of competing priorities each day. Sometimes what is most important to us isn't always what is most important to our employees. One thing that has been made clear to me during this crisis is that if our employees don't feel safe, they can't do their jobs. As a software company, this isn't a reality we often face, but it is something you, as law enforcement professionals, know very well. Before we communicate updates or make changes to our policies and procedures, we keep our employee's safety and wellbeing at the forefront. Additionally, we try and always communicate how the crisis or the changes we make will impact them. While we may answer to cities, mayors, or investors, at the end of the day, we are people leading other people. If our communication doesn't articulate how a change will impact our employees personally, it will not produce the desired results.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly changed how we do business and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Each week brings new challenges and pushes me to grow and learn new things every day. Whenever we roll out a new software feature for PowerDMS, our development team does a retro to reflect on what went well and what they can do better the next time. Learning from our developers, our pandemic response team will meet at least twice to retro on our pandemic response. We have already begun documenting what worked well and the things we can do better in the future. We will be creating new SOP's including one for how our response team will operate moving forward. This evaluation process will put us in an even better position to respond swiftly and effectively if there is a second wave of infection. While none of us know what the future will bring, we can continue to assess and review our policies, procedures, technology, and communication platforms. As I mentioned in the beginning, our hurricane crisis response plans provided us a robust framework and foundation for responding to COVID-19. Our own software tool, PowerDMS, served as the most effective platform for disseminating and tracking policy changes, training, and leadership updates to our employees. I hope these reflections will serve your agency as you move forward in this new reality. Speaking for myself and the entire PowerDMS team, thank you for the work that you do to serve our communities each day. Be safe, and please do not hesitate to contact us if there are ways our software can better help your agency.