As Finnish and global governments and various medias have communicated, COVID-19 disease, also known as coronavirus, has spread worldwide as a major health threat. In addition, it has already caused some serious effects to the Finnish and global economy and to businesses in different countries.
Coronavirus also has indirect effects on Innokas Medical's business. However, we have prepared for the epidemic to ensure our customers' business, the continuity of our services, and the health of our employees.
Innokas Medical has prepared for COVID-19 in the following ways:
- To ensure the continuity of our services, to prevent spreading of coronavirus and as part of our factory and employees protection policy, we decided to restrict customer, supplier and cooperation partner visits to Innokas’ factories (= Kempele site, Helsinki site, Tallinn site) already from 11th March 2020 onwards. By doing so, we’ve wanted to reduce the possibility to spread the coronavirus at Innokas’ factories in order to keep our manufacturing operations up and running. We’ve also prepared to increase our capacity to meet the needs of our customers if needed.
- In order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at Innokas, we’ve also encouraged our employees to work remotely at home always when their working tasks allow this. Thus, our employees have full technical capacity to work regardless of this situation and the place they’re working at, through which we also want to ensure the continuation of our project business.
- The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) advised that companies should establish a preparedness team taking care of the prevention of coronavirus in the working community. We’ve also established our own Preparedness Team at Innokas (on 10th March 2020). The tasks of this team include coordinating coronavirus preparedness and prevention in our work community. The team also follows the nationwide situation, travel information from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and instructions from THL and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health - and further distribute the instructions to our employees as needed. The aim of these preventive actions is to protect workers, customers, partners and their families. Innokas Medical’s preparedness team meets on a daily basis.
- Our sourcing, purchasing and manufacturing teams are monitoring the availability of materials and components, as well as the impact of reduced air traffic on freights. At the moment it seems that the current situation creates some uncertainty, potential delays and cost pressures on the component, material and freight side. We will contact our customers and stakeholders case-by-case related to this if necessary.
- We’ve also recommended that our employees will replace all internal, customer and cooperation partner meetings with virtual conferences or other electronic ways.
- We’ve suggested our employees to avoid travelling both in Finland and abroad. In addition, we’ve also outlined that everyone who has recently returned or returns home from abroad, should stay home and work remotely for two weeks period.
- We’ve also instructed our employees as well as our cleaning and property maintenance teams to pay attention to proper hygiene and purity in and outside the workplace.
We will continue to do our best to ensure the continuation of our services to secure our customers' business. We also want to take good care of the health of our employees. We will actively monitor the progress of the coronavirus epidemic and inform our customers further if needed.
If you have any questions related to this topic, please do not hesitate to contact us.