How Cura Resource Group is Responding to the Coronavirus Pandemic
It's not easy to think of something inspiring to say about logistics when the entire world has been flipped on its head by a pandemic. So after more than a month of working from home — like many of you — I decided to share how my own company is responding. I'm hoping that our experiences provide some comfort either by validating what you're also experiencing or by sparking some new ideas on how to cope.
Solving problems on the fly
Cura Resource Group operates local sales and product distribution centers in densely populated urban markets where COVID-19 has been the most disruptive. Our employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Miami, and San Juan, all have the same concerns most of us do right now about their families, livelihood, and safety. They want to know if they’re considered essential, and, if they still have jobs, how will they get to work? They’re also understandably nervous about allowing the general public into work locations.
In addition, as the pandemic lingers, our clients and their customers are facing production and supply chain interruptions and declining sales, which directly impacts our business as their hyper-local distribution partner. The obstacles to doing business-as-usual have gone into overdrive very quickly, which is why our survival strategy at CRG has been to tackle each COVID-19 challenge as it comes.
People first
Since early March, our priority has been to help our employees make sure their home lives are stable, and they’re staying safe. We’re doing everything we can to get products from suppliers to local distribution centers to customers, all while keeping people from becoming infected. It’s required some creative thinking about both human resources and workflows, but we’re nothing if not flexible. Fortunately, we own and operate the company, so we know what needs to get done, and we have the authority to make it happen.
- Cura Resource Group is providing supplemental income, free lunches, and UBER & LYFT rides for workers who can’t or don’t want to use mass transit.
- We instituted curbside pick-up at all our locations to keep employees and distributors at a safe distance from one another, which turned out to be a lifesaver for people with kids out of school who are showing up with the entire family to pick up their orders.
- We are also communicating with employees and clients as frequently as possible to keep everyone informed about new decisions as they happen.
- Most importantly, we’re thanking our front-line teams every day for staying the course because this business just doesn’t work without them.
A corporate culture that's ready for anything
In the past 18 months, we’ve kept our client Herbalife Nutrition’s local sales centers operating through hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and now a global pandemic. We never set an explicit goal to keep our doors open in the face of almost anything Mother Nature could throw at us, but as it turns out, our integrated business model and our people are a powerful combination when the going gets tough.
Because we hire, train, and manage all of Herbalife’s local personnel, their employees are our employees, and we are intimately familiar with local operations. We’ve come to think of ourselves as “a big mom & pop shop” with significant resources as well as personal connections to our clients and a deep understanding of their on-the-ground business needs. As a result, we’ve been able to redirect orders and shipments to safe locations on a dime, and even provide essential resources like electricity to power payment systems and charge phones to help keep customers connected when disaster strikes. Bigger logistics companies with a few centrally located warehouses could never react as quickly and would never change their model to allow access for the public in times like these, or at any time for that matter.
I couldn’t be prouder of our amazing team during these difficult and unpredictable times. We do our best to give them the tools and support they need, and in return, they demonstrate their resilience and professionalism time and time again. If you are looking for a hyper-local logistics partner who is quite literally ready for anything, please contact us or learn more at www.curagroup.com.
