Page 12 - BusinessWest March 3, 2021

Editorial
ILessons from a Year of COVID
n some ways, it seems like it just yesterday. In other ways, it than we used to, and we learned how to more empathic to the seems like years ago. needs and challenges of employees. Many of us learned how to be
That’s what the last 12 months of COVID-19 — 12 months better managers because, in short, that’s what had to happen. We unlike anything any of us have experienced before — have been learned that making sales quotas, hitting deadlines, and reaching
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like. They’ve gone by fast, but it’s been a long, as in long, year.
As with the Kennedy assassination (for those of us old enough)
and with the morning of 9/11 for those who are younger, everyone remembers where they were and what was happening when the governor put his stay-at-home order in effect. For many, it meant packing up (if they hadn’t already packed up) and leaving the office for what we all thought might be a few weeks, or a few months at most.
We soon learned that those projections were way off base and that we would be living with the pandemic and all the hardships that came with it for a long time.
In the months that followed, we would learn much more, as our roundtable discussion with six area business leaders (see story on page 6) reveals. We learned that we didn’t have to be in the office, necessarily, to get our jobs done. We learned new ways of doing things. We learned to embrace technology — well, because we didn’t have a choice. And we all wondered why we didn’t embrace it earlier.
We learned some other things, as well. We learned that life is hard, and not just during a pandemic. But COVID, by exacerbating things, made it clear that work/life balance isn’t just a buzz phrase; it is a serious, serious challenge and something that employers now understand better than they ever did before.
As our panelists indicated, we all learned to listen a little more
Opinion
quarterly goals are not the only things that keep people up at night. We also learned how to pivot — again, because we had to — and
look for new ways to carry out our missions, make payroll each week, keep people employed, and keep the doors open.
In short, we’ve learned a lot — about pandemics, business, life, and ourselves. This is not a silver lining to this horrible crisis — there are none of those. It’s simply reality.
What’s also reality is that the hard decisions and the myriad challenges are not over — not by a long shot. Now, we have to determine how we’re going to execute all these things we’ve learned when life and work go back to normal, or something approaching it.
We have to decide how our businesses will function when it’s safe for everyone to come back to the office or the classroom or the restaurant. We’ve learned that people can work from home, but is that the best place to work — for the company and the employee? And there are other questions, including those related to how we can continue to listen, understand, and be empathic when we’re no longer in crisis mode.
These are just some of the things we need to think about as we mark a dubious milestone — a year of coping with a global pandemic.
It’s been a year to learn, reflect, adapt, and change. And we’re far from being done with any of those things. v
New Soldiers’ Home Gains Momentum
Make no mistake about it, when it comes to the tragic COVID- related deaths at the Soldiers’
Home in Holyoke almost a year ago, there are no silver linings. There is noth- ing that can fill the void left by lost loved ones, and nothing that can relieve the anguish visited upon staff members who had to endure that catastrophic sequence of events that led to the deaths of at least 76 veterans.
But sometimes, such tragedies eventu- ally lead to progress, to improvements, to new and better ways of doing things. And it appears that this may well be the case with the Soldiers’ Home.
Indeed, out of the ashes of the calam- ity of last spring have emerged plans for a new, eight-story Holyoke Soldiers’ Home that will replace the 70-year-old facility that is, in many ways, inadequate and obsolete. Last week, the Baker-Polito administra- tion filed a $400 million bond bill to move forward with the construction of the new home, the next big step in the process of making a new facility reality.
While the need for a new Soldiers’ Home has long been understood and
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reality. There are stern deadlines to meet and more
important votes to take place in the state Legislature. But
there certainly appears to be sufficient momentum to see this
This project still has a long way to go before it becomes
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embraced, there is no doubt that the events of last spring — when the virus overran the facility amid a series of questionable deci- sions that ultimately led to resignations and, later, indictments for criminal neglect — have helped pave the way for a proper, modern, 235-bed facility that will serve vet- erans for generations to come.
This project still has a long way to go before it becomes reality. There are stern deadlines to meet and more important votes to take place in the state Legislature. But there certainly appears to be sufficient momentum to see this initiative to the fin- ish line. It has been generated by caring
initiative to the finish line.
people who want to do right by future gen- erations of veterans — but also, we believe, by a deep desire to “make things right” for the families of those who died last spring and the for the staff members who have long endured inadequate facilities, said the chairman of a coalition of former Soldiers’ Home administrators, families, and veter- ans advocates who have embraced plans for a new home.
Truthfully, nothing will really make things right. But this is huge step in the right direction. v
12 MARCH 3, 2021
OPINION
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