The coronavirus is unlike anything the world has experienced in generations and is still continuing to spread despite most countries going into lockdown. While many countries are looking to regain control of the situation, businesses of all sizes are needing to review their capabilities in managing assets, staff, supply and facilities and embrace the current situation in the best possible way.
It’s essential to have the right intelligence in place and implement the best operations in order to keep your staff and customer base safe as well as trying to keep your business running to get through the current situation. Here’s a look at how intelligence can help in mitigating the current COVID-19 circumstances.
Communication
A few emails a week isn’t enough in these trying times, regardless of the size of your business, there should be a couple of meetings a week for updates as the current circumstances are changing on a daily basis. While some businesses are just trying to ride it out, communication is key to learning and adapting, get your staff to meet virtually and discuss new ideas to help the business survive.
Decision Making
Going on from how some businesses are just pausing their plans until this is over it’s not something everyone can do. This could all be over in a month but it could go on to be the whole year, we don’t know. Making key business decisions is just as important as communication, you need to make changes that suit the business if this continues for an extended period.
Training & Education
Furlough is unavoidable for many businesses, it gives you that ability to cut costs when you’re business doesn’t have cash flow. But furlough is an opportunity to improve your staff, for when they return to work. If you can develop a training programme this is completely recommended by the government, as long as you company isn’t generating revenue by a member of staff on furlough, you can still give them training and exercises to complete. This way, your employees stay fresh and might even return to their career with more insight into the industry.
Remote Working
By now most businesses have recommended their employees work from home if possible. But for some companies, it’s not as simple as turning a laptop on and getting on with it. Make sure your staff have all the facilities they need to work from home. Check-in with your staff and ensure they have computer security, a good connection, and hardware that can work to the right specification.
It’s also essential to keep your team’s spirits up during their remote working time. While meetings are essential to talk about industry updates, it’s a good idea to think about fun activities to keep the team happy during this uncertain time.
Wellness
Keeping your team’s spirits up is one thing, but you should also recommend how to stay well at home. Being sat at a computer at home all day isn’t ideal so mentioning exercises, mental breaks, probiotic supplements and stretches can really help with your employees mental and physical health.
Mitigating Risk & Workload With Technology
Currently, there’s an influx of enquiries on customer service based roles as customers are uncertain at this time. So using technology to help with the workload and even mitigate risk is welcome.
Chatbots
Using chatbots to help your customer service staff deal with enquiries will really help during this time. Working from home can be difficult and it’s likely that most employees in this role don’t have the same resources from home. So creating chatbots to reduce the workload is important for helping your staff refocus on the more complex enquiries.
AI Tracking
With everything being reported in the news it can be hard to keep up so you might want to consider tools that can help you stay on track. AI tracking tools are available to businesses that keep track of the latest virus news and identify what you need to consider to help your particular business.