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Over the last month, business practices have changed around the world. Routines are no longer the same, and we’re figuring out where to focus and how to pivot based on changing data and operational considerations.

Yet, it’s awe-inspiring to see individuals and teams, all across the world, finding and building solutions to common challenges. Many are taking their business offerings and turning them into solutions for social good. For example, companies like Unilever announced they’d be giving away free sanitizer, soap, bleach, and food. AstraZeneca donated 9 million face masks to support healthcare workers worldwide. Audible announced they’d make hundreds of audiobooks available for free.

Businesses are finding ways to help everyone make it through this situation posed by COVID-19. We’re doing the same, with our focus on Salesforce Care. Salesforce Care gives teams the resources to create solutions that can be deployed quickly and at no charge for at least 90 days. As part of that effort, our employees have also created a free AppExchange app to help with business continuity.

The Salesforce Labs Crisis Response app gives customers a central hub to manage crisis situations. It helps companies ensure employees are healthy and taken care of, while reducing workplace anxiety by mitigating workforce and business impact during times of crisis. A cross-functional team of Salesforce employees -- from solution engineering, emerging tech, customer success, product marketing, Salesforce Labs, and creative --  recognised the importance of a centralised crisis hub and took the challenge head-on to create a solution that can be deployed to do the following:  

  • Address the workforce impact. Track employees’ health and safety status and monitoring locations, all in one centralised hub

  • Respond quickly to employees’ needs. Institute outreach and assistance programs to address the well-being of the workforce and provide the best possible care

  • Keep employees in the loop effectively. Deploy a crisis-centric employee portal to disseminate news and information and collect updated employee status.

  • Ensure business continuity. Activate continuity plans and measure overall business impact to manage future business operations

  • Optional: For those in healthcare, shorten patient wait time by implementing an intelligent solution that transforms images of state-issued IDs into text within Salesforce. This reduces manual data entry and provides an accurate data trail, especially for services working with drive-up care. Additionally, use artificial intelligence to understand how employees are feeling based on communication channels to respond with empathy and direct them to the appropriate resources.

Get access to the free crisis response app here. For more resources, check out the AppExchange COVID-19 page, a dedicated resource center with solutions and content to help respond to the needs of your employees, customers, and community during this time.

For more tips on navigating change, read other articles in our Leading Through Change series.

This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the Salesforce blog.