In the midst of the novel Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic, an almost insurmountable number of people, businesses and livelihoods were affected in drastic ways. Many companies had to suddenly change their entire structures to adapt to these unprecedented changes in order to survive. To avoid irreparable damage and ensure that you, your employees, and the customers depending on your services will be able to steadily brace the storm until it passes, here are some tips to hopefully help you guide your peers through the pandemic and to be prepared in the event of any other future disaster.
What We Can Do Today
While the global public health crisis rages on, many employees are fearful and anxious about their livelihoods being cut, while many employers might be struggling to balance the shrinking profits with the cost of maintaining the workforce. There are many measures such as allowing paid workers to take voluntary, incremental unpaid leave and institutions rotating furloughs that can help balance the effects in moving forward. At the end of the day, it’s the employees who drive the business, so it’s important that everyone feels secure and strong communication is provided on all levels to keep everyone on the same page when everything can rapidly change on a daily basis.
With an event on a global scale, the pandemic is affecting everyone. It’s important we all try and help each other navigate this difficult time to ease everyone’s burdens. Thankfully, there exist many resources that can be invaluable in helping businesses adjust to new work methods. Resources like Zoom, Skype, and Discord can be used for meetings, video calls, and voice chats to ease the transition to work from home initiatives. For more complex tasks, it could be well worth looking into automation services that could, as the name implies, automatically handle tasks that you have to take care of manually. One example is the Magento 2 RMA which can allow customers to manage the returns and exchanges in online stores, taking a significant load off employees who would normally have to manage such tasks themselves. Another way to keep common systems running would be to outsource necessary tasks to other trusted companies in your industry, this not only keeps your workflow maintained, but could provide some needed work to others who might be struggling from a lack of clients.
Preparing for Tomorrow
In the unprecedented state of the world, it’s important for everyone, employer and employee alike to use the extra time wisely and plan for the future, so we can all be ready to embrace the inevitable changes to our society that such a huge event will follow. Using the time we have now, we can all focus our efforts to building stronger foundations, not just in customers, but in talent, finance management, disaster readiness, and human resources. No one can know when something like this could happen again, but hopefully the lessons we learn in these tough times could be positive ones, and next time, we will all be ready to ride the waves together.
