- Secretary designee and CEO of the WEDC, Missy Hughes,
joined us earlier from Viroqua,
and thanks very much for doing so.
- Good morning.
- So, even as Wisconsin starts to reopen,
how bad is it out there for businesses and their workers
across Wisconsin economically?
- You know, it's been a real struggle for many businesses.
Whether the businesses were considered
essential or non-essential,
managing this new normal that we're all facing
of keeping your customers and your employees safe
has created challenges across the board.
And then, of course, the economic impact
of either having to close your doors
or to have to reduce your operations
has been really challenging for businesses.
- Well, in fact, the WEDC,
created a kind of comprehensive reopen guidelines.
This is kind of a cover sheet
of your best practices for businesses.
- What are you hearing from them
about whether they're using your guides
and taking them seriously?
- We've actually had a really fantastic response
to the guidelines.
We started creating those
with the governor's Badger Bounce Back plan,
in order to help businesses be ready
when the time came to open.
I could only imagine how hard it is as a small business
to be standing inside your baby that you've created
and thinking about 'how do I change my tables?'
If I'm a restaurant or I'm a retail shop,
and I've arranged it all beautifully,
and I need to be thinking about,
'Can I do social distance and how will that all work?'
And so, the guidelines were meant to really help businesses
be ready when that time came to open.
Businesses had to ask themselves
hard questions about how to operate.
The guidelines were meant to help, kind of,
walk through that process.
Because of the Supreme Court's ruling with Safe at Home.
We needed to, you know, speed that process up
and I'm glad the guidelines were there to help businesses.
- You have specific guidelines across industries,
but you also have kind of a set of general guidelines.
What are those?
- The general guidelines are really kind of your first foray
into how to address your business.
So, thinking about social distancing,
cleaning and disinfecting on a regular basis.
What are those high-touch areas that need to be taken care of?
Should my employees be wearing masks?
What-- You know, how do you work through all of that?
And then, questions like,
'what happens if one of my employees get sick?
What should I do about that?'
And so, the general guidelines are really meant to help you
kind of approach that initial set of questions
and then for specific businesses
like hairstylist, or restaurants, construction,
we have other ideas and thoughts that you might wanna consider.
- So, you just mentioned that employee--
employers are encouraged to tell employees who are sick
to stay home, but are employers required to provide sick leave?
- You know, one of the things that started
just as we entered into this process
was paid leave for employees,
and so a lot of employers have taken that up
because they wanna make sure they have a plan in place.
So, they wanna encourage their employees to, you know,
say, "Hey, I'm not feeling well,"
so that their employees stay home.
- And employers are also encouraged under the guidelines
to provide a personal protective equipment to their workers.
But are there enough stocks of those out there right now
for employers to provide that?
- Yeah, one of the things that we have heard from
employers is challenges in finding the right equipment,
whether it's masks or gloves or Plexiglas.
So, one of the things that we've done at WEDC is stand up
our Wisconsin supplier Network
to be a location where you can resource PPE.
So, we've had the Wisconsin Supplier Network
for a number of years
to connect businesses to businesses,
along the supply chain
and we've added a feature where if you're looking for PPE,
you can go to the Wisconsin Supplier Network,
which is WisconsinSupplierNetwork dot com
and find sources of PPE.
Or, if you're a provider of PPE,
you can list yourself on there to help businesses find you.
- What in your mind is the best way for retailers
or restaurants or bars to engender consumer confidence,
which is obviously key
to getting people back into businesses.
You know, I think really important is to be communicating
with your consumers and your customers
that you've taken into consideration their safety.
So, whether it's through signage
or making sure that your employees are trained up
and are communicating the steps that they're taking,
and just being really accountable and transparent
about it is the best way.
I came-- Before I came to WEDC,
Organic Valley is an incredibly consumer-focused business,
and that's one thing that hasn't changed
through all of COVID:
"The customers is right."
And so, thinking about your business
from the customer's perspective.
As they walk in through your doors,
what do you want them to experience?
And what do you want them to know that you're thinking about?
- Secretary designate CEO of WEDC, Missy Hughes,
thanks very much.
- Thank you.