With the Governor’s recent lifting of his “stay at home” order, many companies rushing to reopen facilities are facing a collective challenge: ensuring employee safety while the nation is still dealing with a pandemic. It’s a challenge made all the more difficult by the uncertainty surrounding the next few months and what will happen once they open the doors again. …

by Clayton Medford, Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Vice President, Government Relations The Chamber has been heavily engaged in COVID-19 rescue and response advocacy since mid-March when our community went into lockdown. Those first few weeks were a chaotic sprint, with everyone working tirelessly to identify what needed to be done to keep the economy from collapsing and then to …

From a two-week original slowdown to the current over two-month shutdown, employers and managers are trying new and innovative things to keep employees engaged as their teams assume more responsibilities and fears about what will happen next. Working from home is not a new concept, of course; but being forced into this situation very quickly and to have massive numbers …

Dear Chamber Members,   As the pandemic’s weeks have settled into months and what was once odd has become our new work and life normal, you can rely on the stability of your Chamber and our ongoing work on your behalf. I’m proud to boast that we have not missed a beat and continue our member advocacy work, including leading …

It may be difficult to recall in today’s environment, but pre-pandemic business was far from simple. Almost all organizations faced myriad challenges in terms of fierce competition, discriminating customers, longer sales cycles, and difficulty in differentiating their offerings, which were all compounded by tremendous advances in technology and a demand for greater transparency. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, these business …

For most, recent weeks have been a fog where awkward distancing, conference calls, and decisions-on-the-fly have run together with seemingly no end in sight. As business leaders, we’ve reacted quickly to challenges and made decisions in a period of hours or days that, in pre-pandemic days, we would have analyzed and deliberated for weeks or months before making a move. …

It’s difficult to imagine a topic more top-of-mind with business owners and executives today than revenue and, more specifically, capitalizing on credits provided by our Federal and State governments. Chief among these opportunities is the CARES Act that provides assistance to employers who have experienced significant declines in revenue due to COVID-19. On its surface the CARES Act seems straight-forward, yet …

While it remains unclear how quickly the U.S. economy will recover, Virginia should bounce back from the economic storm faster than most. Even as projections vary as to when the COVID-19 virus will peak in the commonwealth, time could be on the state’s side. In recent days the virus peak infection and death models have widely differed on when the …

52% of our area’s adult homeless population were working members of our community before the pandemic hit. Today’s shelter-in-place environment has found many of our region’s workforce dealing with aggravating obstacles driven by their unexpectedly working from home. Our new 2020 work fixtures include children home from school, spotty internet, and barking dogs. While these are mere nuisances for many of us, some members of …

Diversity, inclusion and belonging are no longer just something your politically correct friend talks about, they have become increasingly important in today’s workplace. Turns out that diversity in belief systems, sexual orientation, gender expression, race, and ethnicity translate into diversity in thought, skills, and approach providing a competitive advantage Numerous studies have proven that organizations with a more diverse workforce …