The new Coronavirus and business
Does the crisis drive positive changes in business?
Not everything is black and white; there's a positive side to the health crisis.
The world is going through a crucial stage for survival. There's a fundamental factor we're overlooking: the current and impending global economic crisis. Survival requires drastic and urgent changes in businesses and their strategies.
Now, thanks to Covid-19, digitizing businesses is no longer an option, it's a necessity. The crisis forced a shift in the labor market in a matter of weeks, but not everything is negative; this problem can offer valuable insights for improving businesses, if implemented effectively.
Telecommuting
We are living through an extraordinary time in which many companies must adapt to remote work and don't know how. Now there are no more excuses. The tools exist and, moreover, in most cases they are free.
The post-coronavirus era forces us to stop rewarding presenteeism and start having confidence in the professionals we have hired, offering agile communication and productivity tools to improve their experience as employees and help them reach their maximum performance for the good of the company.
“Bring your own device” philosophy
In the United States, the "Bring Your Own Device" (BOD) policy has been very common for years. Almost everyone has a mobile phone, and many have their own laptop or tablet. Using these devices professionally is the first step toward building new work models that are not dependent on company-provided technology.
Flexibility in the workplace should be bidirectional, making our technology available. At the very least, our personal mobile phones.
New models of continuous assessment
No more measuring, or rather, intuiting productivity through presenteeism or the tedious and ineffective annual performance evaluation.
If employees know their objectives and achieve them, what does it matter where and how they work? When things return to normal after the coronavirus, leaders will need to sit down with their teams to build short-term objectives, both qualitative and quantitative, that also allow employees to self-assess, refresh their to-dos, and internalize the established goals.
Less traffic
Traffic in Quito is unbearable; it takes more than an hour to get to work most of the time. What's the point of dedicating hours of our lives to commuting? Isn't it responsible, whenever possible, to work from home? Isn't it more productive to avoid rush hour and spend 20 minutes commuting instead of 50?
The forced teleworking of these days will eventually become established, and that will reduce commuting, increase productivity and employee happiness, and decrease pollution.
Continuous recognition
Recognition is the penultimate level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ranking as the second most important concern for professionals and proving to be a powerful tool for building culture, identifying, retaining, and attracting talent to companies. Recognition should be continuous, transparent, and impartial, based on professional values and competencies, abandoning outdated policies of recognition based on seniority.
Corporate culture
We're entering a fierce battle to attract top talent. Professionals who want unique experiences as employees, who want to be important within their company, feel valued, and above all, contribute to building a project that adds value to society. And culture is built from the top down, starting with managers, internal role models who must work in accordance with what is expected of their employees. It's simple: if you read, your children will read. That's culture.
Corporate solidarity
The 2020 Edelman Global Trust Barometer study asserts that consumers believe in businesses as the current vehicle for helping to change society. Not governments or other entities, but businesses. Socially responsible businesses, carrying out different types of activities, all aimed at safeguarding human integrity and ensuring the survival of individuals and, at the same time, their corporate structure.
This new environment has made us more supportive, and phrases that were once repeated, such as "This is not my concern, it's not my job," may fall into disuse in the coming months.
Soft skills to power
We are facing a health crisis that will result in the loss of many jobs. This makes soft skills , those that make you a unique professional within an organization, more important than ever.
Human beings are unpredictable, sometimes stubborn, but they are social animals, collaborative and supportive—two values that are key to the development of future organizations. That's why, now more than ever, it will make more sense to hire talent with these outstanding soft skills rather than focusing solely on professional skills that might clash with the new reality of work in the post-coronavirus era.
Not everything points to a bleak outlook for businesses; it's a time for a sudden and necessary change. This new business era brings new business models and strategies; only the fittest will survive. It's time to evolve.