The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact people and countries around the world. This is a time of extraordinary circumstances and uncertainty. It’s also a time when the work we’re doing in support of strategic national priorities is recognized as critical.

At Mercury, we remain laser-focused on four goals we established: To protect the health, safety and livelihoods of our people; to mitigate or reduce operational and financial risks to the business; to continue to deliver on our commitments to customers and shareholders; and to continue the mission-critical work Mercury does every day to support the ongoing security of our nation, our brave men and women in uniform, and the communities in which we all live. We are also increasingly focused on “leading from the front,” communicating as frequently and openly as possible to help keep all stakeholders informed of the latest developments here, which are occurring at a very rapid pace.

I’d like to lead off by saying we have no confirmed COVID employee cases and our collective goal is to do our very best to keep it that way. Even before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, we recognized the need to take advantage of early windows of opportunity, to develop plans to possibly prevent or at least minimize the impact of an incident to employees and the business, and to have continued decisive, proactive responses to a constantly developing situation that are in keeping with our purpose, our commitment to corporate stewardship as well as our culture and values. I’d like to share the things we are doing to accomplish company goals established many weeks ago.

Teams and Communications

To best keep our company informed as a whole, from an overarching leadership perspective we have:

• Involved our executive board, creating a steering team that meets multiple times each week;
• Created a COVID-19 FAQ document for employees, which is updated daily to include the most recent company information as well as that of local, state and federal authorities; and,
• Established a weekly call with all managers to discuss business continuity information, which is then disseminated across the company.

Health and Wellness

At Mercury, our number one priority is to protect the health, safety and livelihoods of our employees. As such, we have:

• Instituted a policy of 120 hours additional sick leave for employees for Coronavirus-related circumstances to incent unwell people to stay home;
• Increased pay for all overtime to two times the regular rate from March 28–April 13 (or beyond if we need to extend our current work-from-home timeline);
• Established a relief fund, starting at $1M, to assist eligible Mercury employees, including temporary agency employees, experiencing unexpected financial burdens as a result of this crisis;
• Committed to covering our employees’ base pay during the time a facility may be shut down;
• Waived the telemedicine co-pay for employees;
• Announced an Uber Eats account for employees to have access to company-paid meals;
• Set up a work-from-home program, moving more than 900 employees off sites until April 13;
• Expanded network capacity for work and home;
• Moved to virtual interviewing and onboarding where possible;
• Created information packets and curated online resources for managers and employees to maximize productivity;
• Put in place segregation areas and other social distancing requirements at all of our facilities in adherence to recommended guidelines; and,
• Placed a hold on all international and domestic travel, requiring 14 days of self-isolation after any business and/or personal travel.

Facility Protocols

Because much of the critical work we do cannot be done from home, we have implemented the following preventive measures at all of our facilities and are working every day to improve upon these measures.

• Limited non-essential site visits by internal and external visitors;
• Limited essential site visits to specific conference rooms/areas;
• Implemented environmental cleaning and disinfection protocols based on CDC and other recommendations;
• Instituted a no-physical-greeting policy, i.e., handshakes, etc.;
• Ordered masks and sanitizers for all on-site employees;
• Posted COVID-19 CDC information sheets throughout all facilities; and,
• Created plans and protocols for confirmed-case and site-shutdown scenarios.

I’d like to offer my most sincere gratitude to the people working on the frontline of this crisis who put their health at risk every day. Their selfless acts serve as inspiration. For our part, we will continue to lean forward and continue to take care of our employees and customers, but in keeping with our culture and values, we ask that you continue to help those in your communities who are in most need during this crisis. There are many people and companies in our communities who will be impacted more severely than we have been thus far. And it is in times like these that we so often see the best in people. Let’s work together to be agents of good.