Name: Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane on returning to work after the COVID-19 crisis
Uploaded: 2020-05-08
Duration: 9 min 42 s
Description: Keane says the company will let high-risk employees work from home until a vaccine is developed.

[MUSIC PLAYING] SUSIE GHARIB: Hi Margaret. Thank you so much for joining us. As you know, many companies are now reopening their businesses in the month of May. Others are saying, it's too soon, it's too risky. What are your plans, and tell us about them? MARGARET KEANE: Thanks for having me. We're gonna take it really slow. We actually had put out communications into the organization that we're not gonna open up till after May 31. We felt that we had to get the organization settled and operating at home. So our whole organization is working from home, including our call centers. And I think what we said is, we're gonna do this in a safe and very thoughtful way. The good news is everyone's working from home, so there's no rush, and we're gonna be very careful about how we proceed. SUSIE GHARIB: Now, I understand that you decided to do what's right for your employees, and not necessarily follow the guidelines from state governments, or the guidance of the Center for Disease Control. Tell us what are the deciding factors for your company, and that's gonna make you comfortable for the next step? MARGARET KEANE: So first of all, we put a whole team around this, and we're connected, both at the national level looking at what the CDC is saying and the experts, as well as looking at each of our states where we have office locations, and we're in a lot of them. And we're gonna make sure the numbers are headed in the right direction, that we actually have the right protocols in our offices to reopen. So we're not gonna open it up to just everybody comes back to work on a particular day. We'll probably phase this in with volunteers first. We've already decided that if you're high risk and you want to continue working from home, you can continue working from home until a vaccine is out. And that includes if you have someone high risk in your family, because this extends beyond one individual. We are gonna make sure we have nurses. We've expanded a contract that we started where we're gonna have nurses through our sites through next year until a vaccine is there. So we can do checks on our employees that do come to work. And we will probably do temperature checks, we were doing them prior. And then we're talking about will we require face masks or not in the office. So there is a team looking at it. We haven't made all those decisions, but what I will tell you it's gonna be very slow, very thoughtful, and methodical, and using data as the primary source of our decision making. SUSIE GHARIB: I understand you have these town hall meetings every week with all of the Synchrony employees. You call it, Ask Us Anything. What is the topic that keeps coming up as you're going through this process, and how is it influencing the decisions that you're making right now and when to open? MARGARET KEANE: I think the number one topic is people are still very nervous and looking for clarity. And I think there is not a lot of clarity now, there's still a lot about this virus we don't know. We do two calls, we do a Ask Us Anything call, which is our leadership team, and they ask us anything. And then the second is we do a weekly call with an infectious disease doctor, and I've been quite surprised. We started out thinking those calls would reduce the number. We're getting over 2000 people every single week asking questions. Last week was a lot about wearing masks. Should I wear masks? Some of the states we're in have opened up, so people are asking a lot of questions around that. So I think we'll get those questions, and we're continuing those calls. SUSIE GHARIB: Yeah. Obviously people want to return to a safe, virus free workplace. But we know that's a hard thing to do, because we still have the virus, and there's no vaccine. You talked about some of the safety measures. Is there anything else that you think you need to do so that people come back to work feeling reassured that it's safe? MARGARET KEANE: We feel like we have the right protocols that we're going to lay out to bring people back safe. But I think there's two things that we have to keep in mind. And I've been talking about this. We need to think about going from what I've said a year out, which is hopefully we have a vaccine, and working our way backwards. Vaccine gives us the surety that we're all safe. So in between a vaccine and where we are today, we have to make sure that our employees feel comfortable coming back, and we're gonna give them choices. And if they're high risk, they don't have to come back. If they have someone in their family that's high risk, they don't have to come back. And we're gonna learn a little bit through this as well, I think, as we bring people back into those sites. And we are gonna have to adjust and be flexible. The number one thing is keeping our employees safe, and making them feel comfortable coming into the workplace. SUSIE GHARIB: And this is also a time for reinvention. Were there any experiences or ideas that were very successful during the shutdown phase that you're considering to incorporate now as you go into this new return to work phase? MARGARET KEANE: Yeah. Probably one of the biggest is do we really need everyone in the office. And I think we're taking a whole look at what roles can just stay at home, and how do employees feel about working at home. We actually just sent out a survey to get some feedback from employees on things that we've done that they think we've done well, other things they want to see. And more importantly, this whole concept of working from home, and do we really relook our whole facility footprint. SUSIE GHARIB: How about on the flip side. Things that you tried out during the shutdown, and really didn't work, and you're not going to reintroduce them in the return to work phase. What would you say? MARGARET KEANE: I don't think we've really had anything that we've introduced that we wouldn't do. I think we've been accelerating more of what we've done than saying, this was a mistake, or we're gonna change that. SUSIE GHARIB: Well, it's obviously the pressure to reopen has to do with getting the economy going again, motivating consumers and businesses to spend again. You're in a great position to tell us how that's all goonna play out. Because after all, Synchrony provides credit cards for companies like Amazon, and Lowe's, and the Gap, and many other retailers. What's your take on consumer spending for 2020? How bad is it gonna be, or will we be in for a surprise? MARGARET KEANE: Well, I'd say this. We definitely have seen a stabilization in our cards where we reported earnings that our sales were down about 30%. That pretty much has been holding maybe slightly better this week. People are spending. I think the real test is gonna be what happens. And I'm not an economist, but I would say I think the biggest test is gonna be how long are the people out of work. So do we see a bounce back? And what worries me, if I think of what I lose sleep at night on a little bit, is we have an enormous amount of small businesses out there that are shut. And I do think we have to start opening some of those businesses up to get people back working. And I think for us the factor is really gonna be how quickly can people get a paycheck and get back to work. I think we have a window here, because all the banks including us are doing the right thing for the consumers, and giving them a little bit of leeway on how they have to make payments, and waiving things, and all of that. All of us are doing that. And many people got a check from the government, which is helping hold them over. And so if you could box that all together and say you have this three to four month window where they're kind of protected, I think once past that, you'll know more in the fall what the consumer is really feeling, and are they back to work, and getting a paycheck. We've been in this business for a very long time. It was created during the Depression, and I've been using that mantra of being created during the Depression, because we were a very innovative company at the time coming up with the idea of giving out credit. So we're trying to be very thoughtful. I think the trick here, we don't want to underreact, but we also don't want to overreact. And until we get a better handle on how the consumers react-- we're doing some surveys now to get a pulse of that. But people are still shopping. And the stores that are open, they're pretty busy. So I'm hopeful that there's a pent up demand out there and people are gonna wanna get back into it. SUSIE GHARIB: Margaret, you mentioned a moment ago about your history, and tying your founding to the Great Depression. You always bring this up, because surviving that terrible time has contributed to the great result of your company over the past 90 years or so. So how do you picture the future of Synchrony in this terrible crisis, and how do you get there? MARGARET KEANE: I think this is probably one of the most exciting parts of the whole journey that we've been on, which is-- look, retail has been going through transformation, we've been part of that road with them. I think consumer behavior has changed dramatically through this pandemic. We've been able to be there with our partners through all our digital assets and capability that we're trying to actually now really expand where we refocused our agile teams to really accelerate a whole bunch of capability. And I think in the end, we're gonna have different consumer behavior, retailers that are totally more digital, cash probably is less used, and we're going into contactless payments, and more mobile apps. I think people have really changed their behavior, and it's exciting to be part of that journey. And I feel like our organization is just ready for that kind of opportunity to really show what we can deliver for our partners. 

Keane says the company will let high-risk employees work from home until a vaccine is developed.

Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane on returning to work after the COVID-19 crisis

Leadership

High-risk employees can continue to work from home.