The breakout of COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked havoc in the business world like nothing else before. Even the successful businesses are feeling the heat because of the extended lockdown across the globe. Many of them are struggling to pay off their rents and employee salaries, while many others have already shutdown their business for good.
Even with the hopes of vaccines reaching the people anytime in the coming months, the problems for businesses are far from over. Many European countries have imposed the lockdown again to curb the spike is COVID-19 cases, which is increasing at an alarming rate. Same is the case with many states in the US.
The waiting game can simply kill businesses, which is why we have no choice but to adapt to the situation, and sustain through the hard times. Governments are doing all they can to keep the economies afloat, by offering stimulus and waiving off compounding of loan interests on loans. However, companies will also have to come up with the right measures to manage their business during this crisis.
Health and security of your employees
Governments have introduced new policies for businesses in order to ensure the health and safety of employees. You will need to implement those policies very closely to prevent the spread of virus in your workplace. Such setbacks can cause serious disruption to your business operations. Getting back from such situations might not be possible.
Use of gloves, face masks, hand sanitizers, body temperature screening, and social distancing should be monitored very closely. We cannot let our guard down even for a single day. You will also need to ensure that your employees follow proper safety measures while traveling to office, and back to their homes.
Another way to minimize he risks is by making your employees work from home, but that is not possible for most of the business models, as they require real people for running the show. You could however see if some of the processes can be handled remotely. That could help in minimizing the safety concerns of your employees.
You will need to use new tools and advanced technologies to ensure robust and secure infrastructure for your employees to work from remote locations. Videos chats and cloud based reporting system will help in monitoring the productivity of your employees.
“Since our content research team is working remotely from their own homes, we encourage them to use VPN for Windows for blocking ads and trackers while browsing the internet. It not only helps our team in maintaining their privacy, they also get access to geo-restricted blocking or streaming content” - Andrew Dominik CEO Quality Guest Post.
We are all in it together
Many companies are forced to hold back or delay the employee salaries, because of interrupted cash flow. It is not easy for your employees to deal with these unprecedented times either. They are also trying hard to cope up with the drastic changes that are happening in their personal lives.
They might have kids who are forced to continue their education online from their homes. You cannot allow the mental stress to cause burnout of your employees, because it will severely hamper the quality and productivity. Therefore, you will need to be more sensitive to their needs, and try to find solutions to resolve their issues.
It is not easy for parents to work from homes with their kids running around. Big companies have paid their staff to create home offices to manage the operations remotely. Small businesses will have to look for alternatives to improve the working conditions of their employees from their homes. It will help in the long run, if the crisis situation gets extended.
You will also need a business contingency plan for occurrence of any COVID cases among your employees. Is it possible for you make someone else do the work, if any of your employees is infected? Will you be able to do things yourself if such a situation arises?
It is important to think on these lines and find some answers, because COVID-19 cases are increasing at an alarming rate. No marketing expert might be able to give you a proper solution, because no one saw this kind of situation coming. You will need to find the best solution to sustain your business, at least until some kind of normalcy is restored.
Plan B:
Many restaurant businesses have taken the takeaways and door delivery route to sustain the crisis. It might not bring them great business, but could make it possible for them to stay afloat till things turn to better. You might have to train your staff to do other tasks in your new business model. That can help in employee retention even in these difficult times.
Many retailers have started using e-Commerce and online stores to push sales. People are not taking the risk of shopping for non-essentials at the stores. You will need to think of ways to take your products to them. Make sure you inform them about the possibilities of delays if your supply chain is affected.
If you are into retail business, you can cut a bit of slack to your customers by offering better discounts and deals. This year so far has been mostly about survival, and not about business growth. Your customers will surely appreciate your gesture and goodwill. In midst of this crisis, you could see an opportunity to grow loyal customers.
“We have 5 retail stores where we sell fashion clothing for men, kids, and women. In addition to all our stores in Southern California, we also sell our collections from our online store. We saw a great response from customers after we started offering discounts on women's jeans ” CEO - Fashion Nova
“People are looking for ways to save money in any way possible because of uncertain times ahead. We at Diabetes Life Solutions have seen an increase in demand of our insurance products, because we offer specialized services for diabetics at lower costs” CEO - Diabetes Life Solutions
Keep in touch:
Things might seem difficult now, but you will need to understand that this crisis shall pass too. Even if you are unable to run your business in a full-fledged manner like you would want to, you will need to try your best to keep your business running. If you are able to tide through this period, there will always come a time in future for expanding your business.
You would have spent years to build relationships with your suppliers or clients, and put in a lot of efforts and spent money to grow your customer base. Also, you would have used a lot of resources to hire and train your employees. You cannot let all that hard work and spending go in vain. Starting all over again is going to be an uphill task.
Therefore, it becomes imperative for you communicate actively with your suppliers, customers, and employees to let them know about the situation. Keep in touch with everyone, so that they will know that you are trying to find the solutions to issues at hand.
Cost cutting:
You will need to find areas for cost cutting in you business operations to minimize the spending. That could relive you from some of the ongoing costs. You should be able to identify the areas to cut costs by closely analyzing the cash flow, both inflows and outflows.
However, you must ensure that the quality of your products or services do not get affected with your cost cutting strategies. Therefore, it is critical for you to be smart when it comes to reducing expenditures.
If you are running an online business, then this could be the right time to push your digital marketing efforts. You will need to make more efforts to reach out to your prospective customers.
The costs of paid advertisements have fallen due to the slowing demands. You could bid for low cost clicks to attract customers to your websites. Guest posting is another digital marketing technique that can help you drive in targeted traffic to your pages. It also helps in increasing the organic search rankings of your web pages.
“We increased our spending on internet marketing to attract more visitors to our BitCoin casinos review website. We saw this global crisis as an opportunity to grow our customer base, because gamblers are hesitant to go personally to the real casinos. Our strategy paid off as we saw a significant increase in the numbers of new subscriptions” CEO - Clovr .
Even if you have to downsize your employee strength to sustain the difficult times, you can keep in touch with the employees you laid-off, and update them on the progress. Let them know that you will be the first person to contact them for rehiring, when the situation becomes feasible.
Prepare to bounce back:
This crisis situation cannot go on forever. Therefore, you will need to pay close attention to signs of recovery, so that you will know when to bounce back. You should follow the government and international policies to stay abreast with the developments taking place in the business world.