By focusing on what’s essential, companies can do more than bounce back – they can reach new heights

The pandemic has completely transformed the business landscape.  In a January study about the pandemic’s economic effects, McKinsey & Company estimated it could take up to four years for companies to fully recover.   

Teams are dispersed, with some braving the office while others continue working from home.  And customer expectations have changed along with the overall climate – they’ve shifted their priorities, refocused their spending, and doubled down on their values (e.g., sustainability, politics, etc.).

Taking all of this into account, the worst thing a company can do right now is stick to what it has always done.  Even if business activity returns to pre-pandemic levels, nothing else will be the same.  Leaders must anticipate a new normal – a weak economy, a reluctant consumer, and an unpredictable market.

But this new normal doesn’t have to be negative.  The post-COVID world presents businesses with a unique opportunity to fix broken systems and reimagine processes.  Companies can start with the 7 P’s, key strategies that will determine every business’ post-COVID readiness.

Your people have been through a lot – furloughs, layoffs, and pay cuts throughout the organization; a nationwide reckoning with race; sick friends and family, or loved ones who may have passed during the pandemic.  Work matters, but caring for your team is of the utmost importance.

To drive your team’s best performance, you must show empathy, by assuaging their fears and addressing their unique needs.  There are several ways you can support your employees:

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• Pay them well – more than ever, employees need to feel financially sound.  Make sure you’re at least matching your competitors’ pay and meeting the market averages.
• Recognize them – when you see outstanding performance, say something.  Even better, show your appreciation with desirable rewards, bonuses, and perks.
• Be social – check in with your team regularly and find ways to keep everyone connected (e.g., weekly virtual happy hours).
• Encourage teamwork – assign projects that require employees to work together, so they don’t feel isolated from the business.  And ensure they share best practices, to aid productivity and help team members feel a sense of contribution and purpose.
• Empower, empower, empower – give employees the freedom to make important decisions and give them challenging projects that develop their skillsets.  

If your people feel supported, you’ll be able to achieve every one of your business objectives. 

Policies

It’s likely you’ve already adjusted your existing policies to accommodate remote work, and you’ll have to adjust them again when you return to the office.  Get ahead of these changes and start preparing now.  Through exploration with key stakeholders think about what your employees’ needs will be in a post-pandemic world.  They’ll need paid sick time, paid family and medical leave, and other emergency benefits.  They’ll need your guarantee that the workplace is safe, and this may require a more flexible work schedule and limits on how many people can work from the office.  You may also need to backtrack and support team members who were furloughed.  

Overall, be transparent about what you decide to do.  Share the decision-making process that goes into your policies.  If you’re reducing hours, explain why and talk about how it helps the organization.

And be inclusive.  Think about what you’re asking for and how everyone will be impacted.  For example, if you have employees who live with immunocompromised people, you may need to be lenient about the return to the office and give them enough time to feel secure.

Practices

Businesses are often reluctant to give up the best practices they’ve followed for years, but this is an extraordinary time that requires a new way of thinking.

Most urgent is the return to work.  What’s the safest and most efficient way to get everyone back on campus?  Where productivity and profits may have driven your decision-making process in the past, there are other concerns now, namely cleanliness and hygiene.  To address them, you can’t apply a blanket policy.  You must consider who feels safe returning and who doesn’t, and then you’ll need an integrated strategy that supports all team members, wherever they are.  This will require input from HR business partners, to ensure the company is compliant with local, state, and federal guidelines, and also to support companywide effectiveness and continued employee development.

You should also think about limitations (e.g., only a certain number of people in one conference room at a time).  How will you apply these rules, and how will they affect the way you run your business?

Additionally, keep your focus on continued improvement.  The practices you adopt right now will need to change as the world around you keeps shifting.  This may mean redeploying talent, testing out new business models, adding new steps to your development processes, and shifting your operations.

Questions to consider when designing a return-to-work hybrid model:

• What does your employee survey show about the workforce’s preferred work schedule? 
• What are the benefits for the organization, stakeholders, and customers?
• What resources do you already have, and what will you need to acquire to bring this plan to life?
• How will this information be shared with the workforce, stakeholders, and customers?
• What systems should you put in place to influence adoption of this model?
• How will you track, measure, and report on progress, and with whom will you share this information?

To put it simply, rethink the way you work, reimagine your organizational structure, and then reshape your teams accordingly.

Programs, Products, and Services

As mentioned earlier, consumers expect more from their favorite companies, be it B2C or B2B.  They want products and services that are ethically sourced, inclusive, and accessible.  Thus, every part of your process, from development to manufacturing to sales, has to be consumer-driven.  It’s the last step, however – sales – where you’ll need to find the perfect synergy of all these values.

In all that you do, you have to think about the end user, not just the product or the state of the market.  You have to assume that customer needs will change, and then you must rise to the occasion.  

For example, let’s say you run a business that specializes in enterprise communications software (e.g., Zoom, Slack, etc.).  Of course, your customers need memberships, downloads, and tutorials to quickly install and apply your technology across their organization.  But as they dive deeper into remote work, they’ll have other needs – physical ones, like ergonomic chairs, standing desks, and better monitors, and more abstract needs, like strategies to maintain work-life balance.  Can you retool your strategy or product offering to provide them more tools and information to make their workdays easier, versus simply selling them products?  Can you take a 360-degree view instead of doubling down on a single aspect of your business?

It’s also critical that you make the sales experience more useful and seamless for the customer.  Is the checkout process intuitive?  Is it easy to get in touch with you if they have questions or problems?  Does your website display complete, detailed information about what you sell?

The customer must remain front and center in this process, and not just what they “need”, but also what they believe.

Partnerships

Business partnerships continue to be a great way to build your business and advance your goals without the stickiness of forming a new entity.  But, in choosing your partners, you need to be more strategic today than ever before.

Pick diverse partners who can help you improve representation in a given category.  The goal of your partnership should be to reach a wider swath of the market, and you can’t do that without expertise from different groups, cultures, and communities.  

Also, be clear about the reasoning behind the partnership, so that you and your partner share an aligned vision.  Those shared goals will make it easy to clarify your positioning.  Then, when you launch and execute your plan, ensure you build a framework for ongoing collaboration, like this comprehensive strategy from KPMG.  Like any relationship, this partnership will need to be nurtured and cultivated.

In an unstable business climate, profit matters.  In fact, many of the steps you took before to protect profits are just as critical now, if not more so.  You should remain growth-focused, and this requires your awareness in a few specific areas:

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• Liquidity – understand the current situation and the outlook.
• Overall Spending – though you’re looking ahead to a post-pandemic world, that world may still require you to tighten the purse strings.  To reduce or control spending, you may need to institute hiring freezes and review internal processes.
• Daily Spending – you need to get in the weeds and understand where every dollar is going.
• Planning – as a business leader, you know the trajectory doesn’t always point up.  Build out plans for different scenarios so you can protect the bottom line regardless of what happens.

Keeping an eye on profit now can you give the financial flexibility you need to take risks in the future.

Performance

In this climate, you have to think of performance management differently.  The old model – annual reviews, standardized forms, measly cost-of-living increases – isn’t going to cut it.  The organization’s goals should be agile and collaborative, so that they’re always reflective of what’s happening at a macro level.  There should also be ongoing conversations, feedback and engagement between leaders and direct reports so that growth opportunities are discussed and strategized weekly, monthly, and quarterly.  

In short, your approach to people management will require a more urgent and dynamic approach. Check out Smartsheet.com for performance management tools. 

Politics

There’s no way to avoid politics in the workplace.  The last few months alone have seen numerous attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.  Companies can’t remain neutral in this environment, and they need to think about politics as a two-prong issue.

The first prong involves the company taking a public stance on hot-button issues and communicating that stance to customers and stakeholders.  Many businesses would prefer neutrality; if you don’t offend anyone, you won’t lose anyone’s business.  But this is an age in which you can lose business by staying silent.  Take a position, be confident in that position, and brace yourself for the possibility that not everyone will support it. 

The second prong concerns how you handle politics internally.  You must recognize diversity in your workplace and not just in how people look.  Acknowledge different perspectives, especially in heated conversations.  Create “safe” zones in the office, in which employees can discuss hot topics and also in which they can avoid these conversations if desired.

Allow people to express themselves and engage in an honest dialogue about sensitive issues, but remember to foster a positive environment.  Give your team a structure to manage confrontations and infuse their conversations with empathy.  

Conflict will be an unavoidable side effect of taking a stance, both internally and externally, but being on the right side of history will be a greater payoff than any momentary pain.

Wrap-up

These are unprecedented times, with many unknowns, but one thing’s for sure – you can control the 7 P’s and get your business ready for a post-COVID economy.  The more you prepare, the greater your chance of success.