Ways To Keep Your Business Blooming During COVID-19 Pandemic

The unprecedented case of the entire world being on home quarantine has posed a serious threat to economies and enterprises. Many companies are concerned about how the situation will affect their business. Our company, The Word Point (TWP), has managed to respond to the circumstances timely and effectively. We keep the stable workflow and communication company-wide by switching to a remote mode with all of our employees working from home. As always, TWP ensures quality work and 24/7 availability. So we decided to share the tips and strategies we used to take control of the situation to help other businesses stay tuned and manage their work during the quarantine.

Here are the 7 most important tips to keep your business running during the quarantine.

Organize, Manage and Inform Your Employees

The first thing is organizing work from home: determine the most critical work operations, decide what work can be done remotely, how to create working space for employees at home and what tools are needed. The next step is to distribute the responsibilities and make sure all of the working processes are controlled as usual. Keep employees well-informed about everything that is going on. Where there is an informational gap – there is much room for rumors, uncertainty, and panic. Explain to the employees that the measures are temporary, that focusing on a stable workflow is a must, and that you have a plan on how to get through the situation. If some of the positions in the company are not currently relevant, offer the affected employees some temporary positions.

Invest in Work-From-Home Technology

While most people are likely to have a phone, a computer, and the internet, often some may not have enough bandwidth at home to do the work they do at the office. Companies may also need to set up the right collaboration tools, such as internal communication programs, cloud storage or secure Wi-Fi networks to allow for remote work. The new tools may be out of the usual budget, but they are often critical to the functioning of the business. If possible, employees can be allowed to take some gadgets, like laptops, from the office home. The IT team, system administrators, security and office manager need to have clear instructions about it. The company should do everything possible to provide employees with the necessary tools for remote work.

Stay Connected

Communication is of the utmost importance when employees work remotely. Mobile phones or Skype may not be the most convenient tools for your current purposes. For calls and video conferences, use Zoom, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting. Sharing files and documents can be done by using a corporate cloud, OneDrive, WeTransfer, and Dropbox. When everyone is working from home and the usual face-to-face communication is not possible, it is important to keep the knowledge base properly organized and updated so that employees can seek adequate guidance there. All the meetings and calls should be conducted as usual. It may also be necessary to ask employees to report about their work in order to make sure they work at a usual pace at home and their performance is not affected.

Useful information: Stay connected with your international clients by using business document translation services.

Keep the Positive Work Atmosphere

It may not be easy for everyone to switch to working from home. Emotional support is crucial during the quarantine considering all the anxiety and uncertainty around. A workshop on how to keep oneself together and effectively work from home or a Q&A video conference with a psychologist may be a good idea. Send the employees a newsletter with some tips and interesting articles on how to eliminate distractors and how to stay healthy mentally and bodily during the quarantine. Organizing coffee breaks in video chats can also help to keep everyone in high spirits. Try to reduce the stress around by shifting the attention of the employees to some more pleasurable things and imbue them with positive vibes. Hold on to your corporate culture and make sure everyone in the company feels okay.

Run Risk Assessments

To be ready to face the future challenges any company needs to conduct a risk assessment. The current situation is unpredictable so it is important to identify the areas of greatest concern. Risk management always starts with recognizing the weak points in the working procedures and operations, information storage and security, and business threats. Assess the likelihood and possible impact of the existing risks. Think of emergency plans and long-term risk mitigation strategies. Currently, not all the measures can be taken but keeping them in mind and starting to make some arrangements is important. Preparedness is always the key to an adequate response to the situation and its effective management. So now it is important to consider the future economic situation and the possible risks it can bring.

Care about Clients

Just as employees, your clients, and business partners need to be updated on the state of affairs. Make sure they are informed that your company functions as usual and the quarantine has not affected your work anyhow. Update the information on your website, your social media pages and other means of communication you use. Send emails to ensure the correct information will reach your customers. For Instagram a good idea is to join the current trend: ask your employees to shoot their videos on how they work at home and put them in one short movie on how your company works remotely. Keep communication as before – do not cancel meetings, just offer alternatives like a FaceTime or WhatsApp call. Apart from taking care of your loyal customers, do your best to find leads, which may be crucial for your business in the post-quarantine period.

Plan for the Long Term

Although China together with some other world economies is already starting to recover, the spread of the coronavirus is still extending throughout the world, creating a ripple effect that will impact us for some time. It is inevitable that the pandemic and the quarantine will affect all the businesses. So it is the right time to plan for the future and design new ways to attract leads and more customers. Probably there is a need to improve the quality of the services or to think of some new marketing solutions. Companies now should look way ahead and design their long term business plans with the consideration that the economic crisis will last for some more time and the recovery can take longer than expected. It is hard to predict what will happen next, but it is critical to be ready even for the worst-case scenario.

The challenges brought by the pandemic and the quarantine are eye-opening on the problems existing in the business. Although this period is demanding, it helps to become stronger and more prepared to achieve the best possible results regardless of the circumstances. The key to spending it with use is staying calm and taking all the needed measures.