In June 2019, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO’s) 187 member States adopted the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, calling on the Organization to pursue “with unrelenting vigour its constitutional mandate for social justice by further developing its human-centred approach to the future of work, which puts workers’ rights and the needs, aspirations and rights of all people at the heart of economic, social and environmental policies”. Less than a year later, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has plunged the world into a crisis of unprecedented scope and scale that has made the imperatives set out in the Centenary Declaration even more urgent as the international community engages in a collective endeavour to tackle the devastating human impact of the pandemic. This crisis has a human face and, as such, it calls for a human centred response. In this policy brief the ILO offers comprehensive and integrated recommendations on the key areas of policy action that should form part of that response. The brief is addressed at ILO constituents (governments, employers and workers), policy-makers and the general public.