Masks on for earnings conference calls, COVID-19 style

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The conference call for Brisbane-based laboratory giant ALS started at 10am AEST on Wednesday. What wasn’t apparent was that the three executives on the end of the telephone line were all wearing face masks in an ALS office in Texas.

Welcome to earnings season, COVID-19 style.

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ALS labs are bringing in hygiene measures to prevent infection spreading. 

ALS started as a soap factory in 1863 in Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point, but now it has operations spanning 65 countries and 15,000 staff testing samples of everything from coal to water.

It has meant that ALS, like other businesses, has had to reduce the risk of pandemic infection. Now samples can be dropped off for contactless collection. Staff receive weekly updates on COVID-19 precautions.

“We do daily temperature monitoring … our facilities are now going through the new normal, putting up these plastic or perspex barriers in reception,” ALS chief executive Raj Naran told The Australian Financial Review.

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ALS locker rooms. 

One problem is the labs themselves. “In the laboratory ... you don’t always have the ability to social distance,” he said.

So ALS split staff into smaller teams and started operating 24 hours a day to reduce interaction. “We’ve had 14 cases of COVID-19 [among staff] and … none of those cases happened within our laboratories,” Mr Naran said.

A big chunk of the business is in the United States and ALS management spends a large amount of time at the global corporate office in a low-level brown building in Houston, Texas.

That’s a region with a mandatory mask order, including people needing to wear them where social distancing cannot be maintained in offices.

“When we were doing the call today, when we have meetings, everybody wears a face mask,” Mr Naran said.

ALS has in fact placed a massive order for all employees worldwide to be provided with cloth masks.

“They'll get enough for one weeks’ worth of wear, so they can wear them one day, and take them home, and wash them,” he said.

“Where it’s mandatory, we require them to wear it.

“A lot of people want to … wear masks.

“It’s a little bit like safety glasses.

“Safety glasses are very normal in laboratories. We see the new normal [as] being face coverings, gloves.”