Star Fasteners Response to Coronavirus COVID-19
As of the date of this news letter, Star Fasteners has not experienced any significant disruption to our source chain due to COVID-19, but we recognize that this status can change very quickly. We will continue to monitor the situation and notify you as soon as practical if we detect any potential supply chain impact to the products and services we supply to your company.
Star Fasteners is focused on the safety of all customers and employees and remains committed to appropriate actions to protect supply chain continuity for all of our customers.
We continue to monitor global developments related to the COVID-19 virus and actively manage the potential risks to our global supply.
We are providing guidance to employees and limiting travel to and from impacted areas. Recognizing the seriousness of this epidemic, we will continue to consult and cooperate with the relevant experts and authorities managing the situation.
How Star Fasteners are responding to the COVID-19 threat?
As the virus is now spreading through community transmission in the UK, all employers and workers will be affected to a greater or lesser extent in some way. People’s health and well-being, and measures to prevent the virus from spreading is at the heart of every Star Fasteners business decision.
As measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 take on increasing priority, Star Fasteners will collate and publish updated resources to aid our response and decision process.
In an effort to safely maintain business continuity and fulfill our customer obligations our team have been taking the following actions:
- Keep up to date with Government and public health advice: This is a fast-moving issue. We are committed to keep up to date with the situation as it develops and refer employees who are concerned about infection to official and expert medical sources such as GOV.UK and the National Health Service. Use the basic but effective ways to help prevent the infection’s spread, including:
- Making sure our workplace is clean and hygienic.
- Promote regular and thorough hand-washing by everyone.
- Providing all employees with an alcohol-based hand rub.
- Encouraging people to use and bin tissues.
- Communicate clearly to employees that they need to avoid all non-essential travel and social contact to help reduce the spread of the virus. Follow official public health and medical advice closely and advise them on what to do if they think they may have caught the virus, or are at risk of contracting it.
- Refer to the NHS 111 online coronavirus service for more guidance.
- where it may be necessary to get medical advice: check out the Government's travel advice and how to contact NHS 111.
- Government data on COVID-19 is updated at 14:00 daily. We ensure that we keep up to date with the latest official advice.
- We have implemented an internal communication strategy so that employees are aware of measures being taken to manage the situation in our organisation.
- Ensure that employees are aware of symptoms. As of 16 March, the Government and public health advice is for anyone with certain symptoms (a high temperature of 37.8 degrees or above and a new, continuous cough), to self-isolate at home for seven days from when the symptoms started. People in this situation do not have to call NHS 111 to go into self-isolation. It also makes clear that if anyone is living with others and they or any household member have these symptoms, then all household members must stay at home and not leave the house for 14 days. The 14-day period starts from the day when the first person in the house became ill. The NHS will no longer be testing people who are self-isolating with mild symptoms. On 16 March the Government published updated ‘stay at home’ guidance.
- The Government has also, as of 16 March 2020, advised that wherever possible people should work from home. It has also advised the general public to avoid all non-essential social contact for example by staying away from pubs, restaurants and cinemas.
Following the latest advice from the UK Government, Star Fasteners have put in place measures to ensure that our business can continue to operate efficiently, should we need to close our offices in the future.
- We are ensuring that our people have the equipment, technology and systems in place to allow them to work remotely.
- Our staff will be able to securely access all necessary documentation remotely whilst following our usual processes and controls.
- We receive most of our communications electronically and recommend that you continue to use email to communicate with us and that you scan in any documentation you need to share with us and attach electronically to the email. If you believe you have sent something to us in the post and we have not responded to it, please speak to your usual Star Fasteners contact.
- As well as communications over email and the telephone, we are also able to offer meetings via video conferencing / Skype.
- Star Fasteners is completely cloud-based. Our core team can work remotely and the services we offer will continue undisrupted.
- The Star Fasteners telephone lines can easily be diverted to staff mobiles using our VOIP telephone system. This ensures business can continue as normal and staff can take work calls from home.
- If resourcing levels in any part of our business are compromised due to illness or inability to work, we will refocus our teams as necessary to deliver to deadlines. This would mean prioritisation of workloads and we would keep those affected updated, whilst taking every effort to mitigate the impact should this situation arise.
- We understand some of our services such as Preventative Planned Tooling Maintenance are vital to our customers businesses. It’s important to reiterate again, that whilst measures are in place, it is highly unlikely we will need to enforce the reduced service level approach and we are confident that the standard contingency plans we do have in place, will enable us to provide you with a full service during this period.
- The Star Fasteners team are connecting regularly with suppliers to monitor possible supply chain material disruptions. The majority of our stock is manufactured in Telford and we have ensured continuity of supply.
- Our team are engaging with our logistics providers to support business continuity.
- We are monitoring transportation routes to identify and/or avoid parts delivery disruptions.
In the highly unlikely event that we have a situation where staff (including those who are in self-isolation) are too unwell to work, then we will need to move into a phased approach of reduced service levels to our customers. What would this look like?
Queries will be categorised by our teams to determine what is urgent. Anything that is deemed non-urgent will be set aside and dealt with once staffing levels are back to the required quantity.
Star Fasteners aim to hold at least 3 months rolling stock and do not anticipate stock shortages. However, we would appreciate forward orders to manage stock quantities and deliveries effectively.
Delivering a full and robust service to our customers will continually be our aim, our main priority will always be to ensure your orders are delivered on time. Should we enter this phase of reduced service levels, then we will need to make decisions based on these priorities. We may, therefore, ask of some customers to make arrangements to collect their orders or to take a delivery once a month rather than every week.
We have a range of different communication platforms available and it’s important that they are utilised should we have any office closures during this period. You can contact us via phone, email and through our social media platforms.
Our contact details are as follows: -
Star Fasteners (UK) Ltd, Unit 1, 44 Brookhill Road, Pinxton, Nottinghamshire. NG16 6RY
Telephone Number: - +44 (0)115 9324 939
Email addresses: -
sales@starfasteners.co.uk
tooling@starfasteners.co.uk
accounts@starfasteners.co.uk
Twitter @starfasteners
Instagram @starfasteners
Facebook @starfastenersuk
LinkedIn @Starfasteners
We understand that the evolving COVID-19 situation will present challenges to our customers and we want to reassure you that we are in this together and we are here to help you wherever possible.