Strategies to Survive the Next Wave

There is no doubt about it, we are living in an anomalous time (“didn’t want to say unprecedented due to its unprecedented use lately”).

For CEOs and CFOs, over the past few months, they have had one mission, ensuring their businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are a couple of effective ways businesses can adapt to survive in a post-lockdown world where the treat of second wave is looming.

Create A New Employee Culture

The work from home revolution was thrown upon many businesses who were forced to scramble and quickly adapt to a remote workforce. Now, some months after the original work from home announcement, companies are struggling to decide whether to continue with a remote team or ask their employees to return to the workplace. The answer is, do both.

To adapt, CEOs must provide their employees the flexibility and rapid reaction to allow them to do either at short notice. This will ensure employees who feel nervous or uncomfortable to return to work can remain at home and employees who need the workplace environment to work to their best ability can.

Equally, alternate the work force, one team works remotely one week while others are at the workplace. If someone needs to isolate, they won’t impact the whole business, only those that have worked in the office with the person. Oh, also have a deep clean crew on speed dial as well.

Establish A Business Continuity Plan

No one could have predicted a pandemic of this scale or magnitude and many CEOs and CFOs were blindsided with the pandemic. That is no excuse now.

Although businesses are beginning to re-open and non-essential workers are being invited back to the workplace, we are not yet clear of the pandemic. With a second wave or second lockdown a possible reality, businesses should ensure they have an iron-clad business continuity plan in place to avoid the chaos and confusion of the first wave of the pandemic. This could mean stocking up on essential supplies, running longer shifts to create an inventory buffer for customers or if you can, operating from different sites.

Assume there will be another lock down, plan for it now.

Plan for The Future

At the height of the pandemic, businesses were mainly focused on surviving on a day-to-day basis. As the dust settles and we look towards a, hopefully, brighter future, it is important businesses start to plan for longer-term projects and begin planning business deals. Without planning for the long-term future, a business will not be able to expand or be stable should another wave of the pandemic disrupt business once again. There is always opportunity for the brave so keep one eye on the future to take advantage.

Resilience and Innovation

The real test of any business owner is resilience.

If you can’t roll with the punches or get up every morning and arrive with a positive attitude, don’t expect your staff to do so. While it may appear that you are facing a business nightmare of epic proportions, you may be reassured that being forced to overcome adversity against great odds has been the foundation for many of the worlds greatest businesses.

Apple spiraled into a 12-year downturn after losing its founder Steve Jobs and only survived by rethinking its entire approach to innovation. FedEx, now a US$30B company went through a patch where it was bleeding cash to the point that at one stage, they only had $5,000 in the bank. When Airbnb launched back in 2008, not a single VC firm in Silicon Valley wanted to touch them. The founders all worked separate day jobs until such time as they could scrape enough money together to get traction.

The key to survival is resilience and opening your mind to innovative ways to do the things your business is known for: faster, cheaper, or delivered in such a way that delights your customers and makes them advocates on your behalf.

COVID will be around for a long time, start creating your strategy for how your business copes and adapts to these ever changing trading conditions.

Good luck!