Organisations have realised that they can significantly reduce employee training costs by use of technology.
If you are planning to train your staff especially on soft skills, you might want to consider either a fully online approach, or a blend of both online and face-to-face.
On top of reducing your training costs, this approach also ensures flexibility during the training and minimal operational interruptions.
As a business owner or leader, you may be wondering what the future holds, and how you can prepare your business to thrive post-Covid. As lockdown orders begin to lift, it may be time to shift from disaster response — making it through the immediate needs of the Covid-19 crisis and related shutdown — to plans for long-term business operations in the new normal.
This could be a great time to re-evaluate your operations and practices and ensure the business goes into the post-pandemic era in as efficient and robust a shape as possible. While it may be uncertain what the market environment might look like, or even when “normality” will be restored, you can take a range of measures in the meantime.
Here are some measures you can take to strategically position your company for the future:
Seek opportunities
History tells us that times of great disruption and change yield opportunities. To take advantage of them, you need to think outside traditional boundaries. It is important to ask yourself what opportunities there are to generate cash flow more quickly.
This period of disruption also offers a significant opportunity to digitalise end-to-end processes and create new business models and revenue streams. For example, many institutions of higher learning have fully embraced the concept of online learning, which has been seen to be very effective when well managed. Some universities offering postgraduate programmes are reporting higher attendance rates mainly due to the convenience this mode offers.
Organisations have also realised that they can significantly reduce employee training costs by use of technology. If you are planning to train your staff especially on soft skills, you might want to consider either a fully online approach, or a blend of both online and face-to-face. On top of reducing your training costs, this approach also ensures flexibility during the training and minimal operational interruptions.
Keep staff engaged
Engaged employees are a vital asset in ensuring your business thrives in the foreseable future, so finding ways to maintain engagement in a remote workforce is another important step you can take.
To achieve a higher level of engagement, you could choose to, among other things, provide suggestion and resources for professional development or broader personal growth. For example, if someone is aspiring to learn a new skill such as presentation or report writing, why not see if there are ways you can support them to do that? This will not only add value to the business but also increase levels of staff engagement.
Learn in-demand skills
While having always been sought-after, some skills have significantly gained importance in the recent past as companies seek to embrace change and build more resilient, adaptable, and agile workforce.
Given lockdown and social distancing restrictions are starting to lift, you could be beginning to navigate your pathway back to normality – or, at least a “new normal”.
To thrive in this environment and secure a promising future, it is important to develop some key skills that will be vital to business success post-Covid. Some of the skills that both you and your team will need to enhance include leadership, flexibility and adaptability, critical thinking, digital skills, communication and emotional intelligence. Creativity and innovation skills will also be key as your company navigates post-Covid.
Communication and relationship building
Whatever the “new normal” looks like, communication and relationship-building skills will remain an essential part of your armoury. You will need to promote collaboration and teamwork to tap strengths and focus on what matters. Your formal and informal networks will probably be more important in the coming days and years than they’ve been.
In the customer-supplier context, you’ll quickly find out who you’ve got a relationship with, and who you’ve just got a transaction with.
Whatever direction this pandemic takes, you have an opportunity to create a firm foundation for the future. If you take advantage of the opportunities presented by this pandemic, you will be on your way to building a thriving business in the post Covid 19 period.
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