While I have seen lots of communications from big tech companies (mainly US) to employees regarding COVID-19, I have seen little examples from tech CEO's with small teams (or European startups) share examples of how they've communicated about COVID-19 to their teams.

Therefore I thought it might be useful to share how I communicated about it yesterday by sharing the message/measures I posted on Slack and also how to cover it verbally, based on my learnings from yesterday (a combination of things I definitely got wrong and things I hope I got right):

The Message

In light of the spread of COVID-19, community transmission in Denmark and the latest advice from the Danish Health Authority, please take notice of the following for the sake of your health, other's health and the company's health:

• Wash your hands when entering the office each morning.
• Wash your hands before lunch and before touching food at other times (Here's a link to a video that shows you how to wash hands effectively: https://www.nhs.uk/video/pages/how-to-wash-hands.aspx)
• If you cough or sneeze, do so into the crook of your elbow.
• Avoid (busy) public transport on your commute (if possible).
• No handshakes/hugs.
• Make sure you are not a bottleneck, for example: If there is anything mission-critical that only you know how to do/deal with then please let me know today.
• Take your laptop home at the end of the day (should you need to suddenly self-quarantine or we need to shut down the office and work remotely).
• Go home if you feel unwell or better still, do not come into the office in the first place if you are feeling unwell.

I appreciate that this might seem excessive, however, it is my responsibility to care both for you and the company and my risk assessment is that while there is very little downside of implementing the above measures, the potential upside is significant.

"Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate"

And here are some tips on how to communicate this verbally based on my learnings from yesterday (a combination of things I definitely got wrong and things I hope I got right):