As one of New Zealand’s leading and oldest retailers we are taking serious measures to ensure that our people, our customers and business partners are protected from the spread of COVID-19.
First and foremost, we have advised our people to stay at home if they are feeling unwell and to seek medical advice via Healthline or their GP. This is also the same message for our customers and the wider community.
Our stores, including our online store, are open for business as usual, with our teams taking additional steps to ensure everyone’s safety.
Keeping social distance is known to be an effective measure to slow down the spread of COVID-19 so in addition to our precautions around meetings and gatherings noted below, we have asked our people to change how they greet each other.
We have cancelled internal events and asked our people not to attend any public work-related events regardless of the numbers attending. We have asked that where possible, meetings with external parties are postponed or conducted remotely. We have also cancelled all business-related international and non-essential domestic air travel.
Prior to the Government’s border control changes, which require all people entering New Zealand to self-isolate for 14 days, House of Haghi had already required a level of self-isolation of any team member returning from a high-risk country as defined by the Ministry of Health.
While we have always had strict hygiene practices and cleanliness standards across our business, we have implemented additional cleaning and sanitising regimes in high use areas in stores, and are distributing additional cleaning and sanitising products.
We continue to follow the advice from the Ministry of Health which recommends regular hand washing and cleaning as the most important preventive measures we can adopt and have reinforced this with all of our teams.
We have provided our team with guidance and information so they can keep themselves and their families safe and we will continue to update them as the situation unfolds.
These are unusual times that call for unusual measures however I am sure you will understand the importance of the steps we have taken to protect the health and safety of our team, customers, communities and our business partners.
We hope that you and your families stay safe and healthy and we appreciate your understanding and patience as we work through these unusual times.
House of Haghi & Sons
17 March 2020
