Management Lessons From the Companies Who Are Surviving (and Thriving) During the Pandemic
In the important 2-month period from February to April 2020, there were 3.3 million fewer active business owners in the US, a 22 percent decline. The highest ever decline in active business owners resulted in losses to business activity that were seen across almost all industries.
Table of contents
- What are Business management lessons from Covid 19?
- How did some companies go from barely making it through covid 19 to thriving in it?
- Business sectors boosted by coronavirus concerns
- What are the Technologies that eliminate the need for physical contact between users?
- How did some businesses have Positive Impacts on their Business Despite Pandemic?
- Key Takeaways
What are Business management lessons from Covid 19?
Several businesses have already resumed some form of physical work. In the United States, for instance, workers are returning to offices at an increasing rate. Visitation to the headquarters from the consumer and retail sectors is up 80%, from the travel and logistics sector up 50%, and from the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors up 10%.
It wasn't obvious a few short months ago that business leaders would welcome a return to the office with such enthusiasm. Now, however, it's clear that they will. Fifty-two percent of the C-suite executives we surveyed are in favour of a full return to work, with employees present at least four days per week. Nine out of ten believe workers will come into the office at least three times a week, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
In short, there are valid reasons for management to want employees back at the office. People's sense of community and friendships suffered as the pandemic dragged on, especially among newer employees. The use of remote tools for interdisciplinary collaboration between silos was becoming problematic, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Because of the large number of women who left the labour force, inequality widened. Inadequate informal and intimate human connections are a contributing factor to the rising rates of mental-health problems, grief, anxiety, and burnout.
It is crucial to turn these tendencies around. However, executives are beginning to understand that going back to work in person won't solve all their problems, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Employees are reluctant to return to pre-pandemic working norms because they enjoyed the flexibility and convenience of remote work despite the challenges they faced. Upon returning to the office full-time, more than 40% of employees express concern that they will become disengaged from their work and a sizable proportion of those employees are ready to leave, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Leaders have been working for years to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace; a return to a more office-heavy work environment may set those efforts back, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Loss of flexibility could cause more women to leave their jobs, and some workers, especially those from minority groups or with young children at home, worry that returning to work will be detrimental to their mental health.
Even top-level executives are beginning to fret over a possible performance slump. Will it not be more challenging to work together if some people are on the phone, some are in a video conference, and the rest are at the office? Will it require a lot of money and fancy new technologies to get it right? Surely there are more productive ways to spend the hours each week spent commuting, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
As they learn more about this remote return, they begin to realise how complicated it is. This article aims to clarify the process. First, we'll look at data from a survey of 500+ top-level managers in 8 different industries; the results provide insights into the most important follow-up a leader can make after time away, covid 19 enterprise management lessons. Then, we'll examine the five core competencies that businesses need to develop to make the most of this opportunity and establish a sustainable, high-yield future operating model.
In our study sample, roughly half of the businesses increased performance during the pandemic, while the other half saw either no change or a decrease. When we compared these figures to others based on the same set of performance metrics, decision making time and quality, individual productivity, team productivity nothing changed, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
The top performers were also less variable, suggesting that improvements in performance would be widespread rather than limited to a select few squads. Workers were 48% more satisfied with their jobs at the most productive companies, while they were 9% less satisfied at the least productive ones, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
The takeaway is that organisations that are able to weather a crisis are those that have already begun the shift toward more adaptive, people-centered business models that many leading companies were implementing even before the pandemic hit, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Companies had to become more adaptable during the pandemic so that they could deal with the countless obstacles they faced. In the future, successful businesses will almost certainly increase their investment in this area. Our research uncovered four main takeaways from remote work that should guide the actions of any company going forward, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Organizational objectives and strategies should be made crystal clear
Throughout the pandemic, executives worked tirelessly to provide their teams with crystal-clear instructions, whether that meant outlining strict strategic priorities or painstakingly breaking down complex problems.
Leaders at Organizational Resilience have increased their spending on providing such transparency by nearly 80%. Non-Resilients' top brass doubled down on their efforts, but that wasn't nearly enough.
According to the McKinsey research on decision making, one of the three must do's to drive better and faster decisions across teams is to establish clear goals and clarify strategy, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Because employees at lower levels who are empowered to make decisions are often too siloed and have individual accountabilities that are too tactical, leaders often feel the need to intervene and micromanage decisions. If upper management doesn't spell out the big picture, employees at lower levels who are capable of making good decisions end up making bad ones, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
The number and nature of opportunities for team building
More than 60% more time was spent by pandemic-ready organisations on networks of small, empowered, cross-silo teams (versus 29 percent for Non-Resilients). Also, they put resources into strengthening team chemistry by organising more and better team-building activities, covid 19 enterprise management lessons. They increased leadership training for team managers to back up this change in management style and the ensuing increase in delegation.
Rather than focusing on the process itself, their teams prioritised the final product. Resilient organisations have embraced the useful shift toward input-based management to outcome-based management, in which groups work toward a specific goal using whatever means they deem most effective, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
It will play a crucial role in the workplace of the future. The importance of interdepartmental and cross-functional teams within successful businesses is only expected to grow, covid 19 enterprise management lessons. They promise to implement rapid changes in managerial standards and models of operation. And they'll put money into making sure those networks thrive.
We need to devote more resources to mentoring and praising
Almost half of highly resilient organisations have increased their spending on coaching, and the same proportion has increased employee recognition, covid 19 enterprise management lessons. The vast majority of non-resilient organisations did not increase their investment levels.
In order to speed up decision making, top performers shifted senior executives into goal-setting, decision-making, and coaching roles, a change that will be just as important for the return from remote control as it was during the pandemic. There was a 73% increase in microinteractions (meetings that lasted less than 15 minutes and resulted in a clear action or decision) at Organizational Resilience, which was more than twice the increase at Non-Resilients.
Successful delegation requires more than just handing off tasks and hoping for the best. This is a task that requires active participation. When leaders provide clear strategic direction, helpful coaching, and sincere praise, empowerment thrives, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Enhance your teamwork by using cutting-edge collaboration tools
Integrating new forms of collaboration technology into daily operations quickly is a critical factor in the success of any business. Our survey found that nearly 60% of executives at Organizational Resilience and only 24% at Non-Residents felt that their companies made collaboration technologies easy to adopt, covid 19 enterprise management lessons. And while only 15% of Organizational Resilience found it challenging to adopt new technology, 30% of Non-Resilients mentioned similar difficulties.
Achieving Long-Term Success in a Multi-Modal World
Many of these insights are not groundbreaking; for example, we know that hierarchical organisations stunt development and hamper quick decision making, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
However, many businesses struggled to push through an operating-model reinvention in the years leading up to the pandemic because of the many other demands on their time and resources. The pandemic demonstrated that they have far greater potential for making substantial changes to their operations than they had previously believed.
Companies want to hold on to their gains as employees return to the office. For optimal profitability, it is necessary to fortify a new, more competitive operating model with five pillars. As we've already established, Organizational Resilience excels in coaching and giving credit where credit is due, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Repeated studies have found that the sense of purpose employees feel when they are part of a community whose values they share, that does good in the world, and that recognises their contributions is the single most important factor in driving performance and productivity, even above pay and stretch goals. Leaders can strengthen this capability by putting more thought into their face-to-face interactions, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
During the Industrial Revolution, a shift occurred from manual labour in the fields and artisanal workshops to mechanised production in factories using standardised, interchangeable parts. To ensure that tasks were completed properly, supervisors kept close tabs on employees as they worked the assembly lines in factories, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Studies of time and motion have made this an exact science (in the vein of Frederick Taylor's scientific management). Because of this, controlling and monitoring activities based on their tangible, measurable outcomes has become second nature in the workplace, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
The transition back from remote work provides a once-in-a-lifetime chance to ditch the old methods in favour of a more humane and productive outcome-based management structure. Organizational Resilience' success shows that leading companies have begun taking these steps.
To gain such strength, traditional methods of managing employee performance should give way to methods that put more power in the hands of employees and help them achieve their full potential, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Teams can provide 360-degree feedback, managers can be held accountable for goals and outcomes being clear, senior leaders can devote substantial time to mentoring, and objectives and key results can be introduced to sit alongside KPIs as additional measures of success. All of these methods share a common objective: to encourage workers to concentrate on results rather than processes, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Quicken the pace at which talent is developed, especially through reskilling
One essential aspect of agile models is the capacity to staff teams from different departments. Companies could now hire qualified people from all over the world, regardless of time zone differences. It allowed businesses of all sizes to bridge the gap between available talent pools in different parts of the world. Switching to a new video screen would allow workers to be deployed to a new team.
Improved talent velocity was a major competitive advantage for Organizational Resilients and is likely to remain a differentiating factor for successful businesses in the future. The development of internal talent marketplaces or talent redeployment hubs that facilitate the identification of suitable projects is one way to bolster this ability, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
This may entail allowing people to switch between projects without having to abandon their established social circles. Importantly, this also calls for a rapid increase in the availability of retraining and upskilling opportunities, including both formal education and more informal forms of training like apprenticeship and mentoring, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Due to the effects of automation and other new technologies, it is crucial to strengthen reskilling efforts. Messes are inevitable in automated processes. In many cases, only the parts of jobs that do not require the kind of substantial value-added work that people do are being automated. When half of a worker's tasks are automated, the best way to reap the benefits of this shift is to restructure the job entirely, creating brand-new positions that call for different sets of skills.
The need for improved social reskilling may be a direct result of automation. As more and more modular, predictable, and routine tasks are automated, the work left for humans is increasingly more complex, unpredictable, and inherently human.
Working in this field requires a person to have strong social and emotional intelligence, as well as superior judgement, initiative, originality, and flexibility. It is typically goal-oriented and founded in reciprocal relationships. In other words, the work that will add the most value in the future will be collaborative, complex, and interdisciplinary.
Collaborate in novel, low-cost, highly-variable ways
Since the beginning of this year's pandemic, many top-level executives have learned the hard way what it really costs to work together in the same way they did before. A CEO from North America once told us that travelling to Asia for a one-day meeting with his leadership team consumed the better part of a week.
During the pandemic, however, he was able to hold effective meetings with people in different time zones and across oceans for no additional cost. He claims that his Asian teams are more familiar with him than ever. While sales teams acknowledged the importance of face-to-face meetings for making new connections, they found it much simpler to keep up with existing contacts when working remotely.
It's possible for teams to work together virtually for no extra cost. But when people get back to commuting and travelling, the transaction cost of collaboration will increase. As you can see, this is not a reason to give up travelling altogether. Instead, companies can develop a muscle to speed up the rate at which they learn about and implement more efficient ways of collaborating in both digital and analogue settings.
The leaders of an organisation should establish a template for this. Executives and team leaders have an obligation to familiarise themselves with and make effective use of these collaborative tools. It's possible that changing the layout of offices will be necessary to accommodate various forms of hybrid teamwork, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Organizations can maintain low interaction costs and high productivity by incorporating sufficient flexibility into their suites of collaboration tools. Some conversations are better off being casual and off-the-record. Sometimes they require the use of a whiteboard. They may also benefit from instructions on how to hold productive hybrid meetings, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Before the last five years, most groups communicated through email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings. As a result, we can choose among numerous new possibilities. The technology behind video conferences has advanced, becoming increasingly mainstream and capable of supporting a wide range of collaborative activities such as polling, brainstorming, and the use of virtual whiteboards.
At large events, it is common for there to be virtual producers who assist with organising things like polling and virtual breakout sessions. There has been a dramatic increase in the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication methods such as chats, instant messaging, and file sharing, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
We need to be much more deliberate in the way that we design interactions and the way that we communicate expectations and working norms in order to get the most out of these technologies.
Accelerate the spread of new technologies
Technology adoption was quicker and more frequent in resilient organisations compared to non-resilient ones. Today, it's imperative that every business acquire this heft. It's imperative that adopting cutting-edge tech and making informed decisions based on data becomes the norm.
Learning something new (whether it's how to drive a car or how to lead a team) can be taxing on the learner in the beginning because they aren't yet proficient at it. This is why it is not sufficient to simply deploy a new piece of technology for it to be adopted, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Effective and efficient use of technology depends on not only having access to it, but also on knowing how to put it to good use. It highlights the importance of building a learning organisation that can adjust to new technological requirements.
Over the past 12 months, we saw numerous instances of such flexibility. Teams in the supply chain realised they could improve visibility into the system by mining data that had been sitting around unused for years, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
An oil and gas company's engineering division has instituted the practice of creating a dashboard at the outset of each new project to monitor progress relative to predetermined goals. When the kickoff was over, the dashboards were online, and the data was being fed into them, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
The transition back from working remotely presents an excellent opportunity to rethink and improve upon current methods of getting work done. However, returning to work isn't a panacea.
Organizations that were resilient to the pandemic did so by having open lines of communication, relying on cross-functional teams that prioritised outputs over inputs, providing effective coaching, publicly praising employees for their efforts, and quickly adopting new forms of collaboration. Future productivity powerhouses will be driven by people with these traits, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Building the muscles needed to drive this kind of success will take time, at the very moment when leaders are faced with a damaged, needy workforce. It is a difficult task that will require all the compassion and tolerance from the leaders. Also, it's a difficulty that could ultimately shape the way we work in the future, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
How did some companies go from barely making it through covid 19 to thriving in it?
One could say that the 1966 World Cup was a nadir for Brazilian soccer. Despite having won the previous two tournaments, this year's squad was eliminated in the first round, and Pelé was unable to salvage the situation. He threatened to never play in another World Cup after being flagrantly fouled repeatedly, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Many people began to wonder if Brazil's heyday had come and gone. However, Brazil won again in 1970, and this time they did so with such elegance and beauty that they are widely considered the most beautiful team in the history of the sport. And Pelé was honoured as the tournament's most valuable player.
Changing their fortunes required original thinking, in this case the development of a new and exciting attacking soccer strategy. The team had to come together despite major personnel changes. As well as managerial and on-field leadership, this endeavour was crucial. To recapture its former glory, Brazil reinvented itself from the ground up.
Brazil's experience with setbacks and eventual success after the coronavirus outbreak can serve as a model for other countries as they contemplate how to recover from the damage the virus caused to their economies, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Resolve, resilience, return, reimagination, and reform are the five qualities outlined by McKinsey as essential for business leaders to navigate the transition to the next normal. We pointed out that the order in which these steps occur may change depending on the type of business, the industry, and the country.
In this piece, we argue that businesses can make a stronger comeback by rethinking their business model as they ramp up again. Not wasting this opportunity means missing out on the benefits and advantages that come with being better prepared to deal with the next normal, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Regaining revenue, restoring operations, rethinking the company's structure, and speeding up the implementation of digital solutions are the four primary areas of focus, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Rapidly recover revenue
Regaining lost profits slowly as the recession ends is not an option for businesses. If they want to succeed in the long run and stay ahead of the competition, they will need to drastically alter the way they generate revenue. Companies need to get in SHAPE to achieve this,
Mentality of a startup. This prioritises doing rather than thinking, experimentation over analysis. Daily team check-ins, weekly 30-minute CEO reviews, and biweekly 60-minute reviews should be established to foster agility and accountability.
Simply put, they're human. The best way for a company to operate will depend on its employees, so it will need to rethink its current structure. McKinsey found that, as of early April, 60% of companies reporting using remote sales models found them to be as effective as (29%) or more effective than (31%).
The speeding up of digital, technological, and analytic developments. It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic sped up the transition to digital formats. However, the most successful businesses are improving and expanding their digital channels even further. Successfully utilising advanced analytics, they are integrating previously untapped data sources, such as satellite imagery, with their own insights to increase the quality and speed of decision-making and forge stronger bonds with their customer base.
Goal-oriented customer strategies
After COVID-19, businesses need to know what their customers will care about most, so they can provide them with new use cases and personalised experiences.
Adaptability and ecological systems. Supply chains and distribution channels are particularly vulnerable to interruptions during times of crisis, so the ability to quickly adjust is crucial. That calls for a shift in the underlying ecosystem and the exploration of novel ways to work together with stakeholders all along the supply chain.
Recognize and rank opportunities to generate income. What really matters is zeroing in on the most important revenue streams and acting on the now or never changes that must be made before the recovery can gain full steam.
Launching campaigns specifically aimed at winning back loyal customers; creating customer experiences with a focus on enhancing health and safety; adjusting pricing and promotions based on new data; reallocating funds to proven growth sources; reskilling the sales force to support remote selling; creating flexible payment terms; digitising sales channels; and automating processes to free sales representatives to sell more are all examples.
Following identification, these metrics must be rigorously prioritised to account for their impact on earnings and the speed with which the company can implement changes, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Take quick and decisive action. Businesses have performed at a level of efficiency and effectiveness rarely seen before the current crisis. Keeping hope alive will provide a sustainable competitive edge.
Take, for example, a car rental firm in China, where sales dropped 95% in February. In spite of the quiet, company executives did not sit around moping. They instead behaved like a young company. They put money into social listening and micro-segmentation to better inform their personalization efforts. Because of this, they came up with fresh applications, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
To give one example, they found that many tech companies discouraged their employees from taking public transportation. Based on these findings, the car rental company was able to test and improve its targeted advertising strategies. First-time customers who cancelled orders were also contacted via phone to reassure them of the company's commitment to safety initiatives like no touch vehicle pickup.
Three agile teams with interdisciplinary expertise were assembled for programme management, and a dashboard was built to monitor recovery. Company campaigns that could take up to three weeks to launch before the crisis are now being launched in as little as two or three. They were able to recoup 90% of lost revenue from the previous year in just seven weeks, which was nearly twice as fast as their main competitor.
Build a flexible business framework. Marketing and sales executives are becoming more open to agile practises as a result of time pressure, and they are becoming accustomed to holding impromptu video conferences in order to address issues and delegate more authority to their distributed teams. Naturally, it's also crucial for cross-functional teams to keep their eye on the big picture and refrain from acting in a panic, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
In this context, agile refers to the adoption of a new operating model centred on the needs of the customer and backed by suitable procedures and oversight. Sales teams that use agile methodologies, on the other hand, constantly evaluate new opportunities, rank them in importance, and make snap decisions about where to allocate resources, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
But this strategy only works if there is a well-defined expansion plan that details the steps necessary to acquire each target demographic. A dependable sales-pipeline-management procedure is also essential for the quick coordination of local sales and global business units and the swift reallocation of resources, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Rebuilding operations
Because of the widespread effects of the coronavirus pandemic, supply chains and service networks worldwide have been made more vulnerable to disruption. Simultaneously, it is remarkable how quickly many businesses have adapted, ushering in completely novel levels of transparency, responsiveness, efficiency, and connectivity with their customers, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Making business practises more robust. Successful businesses will revise their internal processes and supply networks to better withstand a wider variety of severe shocks. In addition, they will act quickly to rebalance their global asset base and supplier mix. As a result of changes in technology and consumer preferences, regionalization of supply chains has become increasingly common in product-driven value chains, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Increased use of external suppliers to supplement internal operations, greater workforce cross-training, and dual or even triple sourcing are all examples of measures that could be accelerated by the reinvention and regionalization of global value chains, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Increasing the rate at which the entire value chain is digitised
It may take a lot of time and money to implement this new level of operational resilience. The good news is that pioneering thinkers have shown how the digital and analytics tools and techniques of Industry 4.0, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, can drastically cut down on the price of adaptability, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
In short, low-cost, high-flexibility operations are not only possible, they are happening. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, most businesses had begun to digitise their internal processes. Significant gains in efficiency, adaptability, quality, and communication with customers can be expected if they begin working on these initiatives immediately.
More and more information is becoming public about both capital expenditures and operating costs
Firms can rebuild for the new normal by taking a different tack with spending as they weather the economic storm. Months of work are being condensed into weeks or days thanks to a full suite of technology-enabled methodologies that are speeding up cost transparency, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Procurement spend analysis and clean-sheeting, end-to-end inventory rebalancing, and capital spend diagnostics and portfolio rationalisation are all examples of the kinds of tasks that can be performed with the help of digital methods. Business owners are also exploring service models in an effort to convert their fixed capital expenses into more manageable variable ones.
Adapting to the Workplace of Tomorrow
Increased reliance on automated systems and other forms of technological innovation was bound to transform the nature of work in the future. COVID-19 sped things up. For instance, workers in all industries have figured out how to multitask and work together digitally to get things done, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
In operations, the shift will be even more pronounced, leading to a sharper decline in manual and repetitive tasks and a corresponding increase in demand for analytical and technical assistance. Because of this change, it will be necessary to devote significant resources to motivating employees and providing them with training in new skills, much of which can be accomplished through the use of digital resources, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Reconceptualizing a Long-Term Operational Advantage
Competitive advantage and new customer value propositions are created through dramatic shifts in operations strategies in response to radical changes in industry structure, customer expectations, and demand patterns.
To better serve their customers, successful businesses will reimagine the function of operations within their organisations by implementing strategies such as rapid product iteration and customer experience improvement, mass customization, enhanced environmental sustainability, and more fluid ecosystem management, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Engaging in Activity
During COVID-19, businesses have had to act swiftly to keep up. Once performed on a weekly or monthly basis, planning for sales and operations is now more commonly performed on a daily basis. As this progress is built upon, time will remain of the essence. Those businesses that understand this and are bold enough to establish new benchmarks and challenge outdated assumptions will gain a competitive edge in the long run.
Changing the way things are set up
An 18-month plan was being developed in 2019 by a major retailer to begin curbside delivery. Within two days of the COVID-19 outbreak hitting the United States, the country was placed under lockdown, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
The great unfreezing, if you will, has taken place as a result of the intense coronavirus crisis, which has prompted organisations to work in new ways. Changes in operational models are largely responsible for this development. It's no longer acceptable for a company to take days or weeks to make a decision; instead, we have transparent objectives, dedicated teams, and instant decision making.
As the world enters the post-COVID-19 era, leaders everywhere must make a steadfast promise to never turn back. How they reimagine their businesses will be a major factor in determining their competitive advantage in the long run, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Business sectors boosted by coronavirus concerns
Software and hardware for teleworking
Many companies are turning to remote working apps and software as a way to keep production levels up while governments take more drastic measures, such as full or partial lockdowns, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
When the pandemic hit, the value of many tech companies dropped, but Zoom's stock rose. With this week's growth, Microsoft Teams has overtaken Slack's total user base, which was 44 million users.
On the first day that Chinese office workers were allowed to work from home, two of the most popular workplace collaboration software platforms, Alibaba's DingTalk and Tencent's WeChat Work, temporarily crashed. Businesses will rely more on cloud and virtual office solutions to increase operational flexibility and build in contingency for disruptions, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
E-learning
Closed schools and universities have affected 1.5 billion students in over 180 countries as of this week. Accessible remote learning technologies allowed for the instantaneous reformatting of many programmes for online delivery, with many colleges moving toward distance learning and many teachers attempting Google Classroom or web apps like Seesaw for the first time with students as young as kindergarten. As a result, many families are trying out homeschooling for the first time.
Adults and business owners all over the world are turning to online education in the form of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and webinars to learn new skills and find ways to make ends meet during the economic downturn, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Coursera provided aid by making all of its courses available at no cost to colleges and universities around the world. In March, Bloomberg's philanthropic arm launched an online coaching programme with Johns Hopkins University's public health school to offer mayors on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis access to virtual technical advice, covid 19 enterprise management lessons
Entertainment
The travel bans, mandatory self-quarantines for returning travellers, and social-distancing measures are good for the home entertainment industry. As arenas for sporting events and movie theatres close down, online streaming has stepped in to fill the void, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
For instance, the World Economic Forum found that during the first half of February, when China was largely cut off from the outside world, weekly app downloads increased by 40 percent compared to the same period in 2018, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Virtual reality (VR)
Many people are interested in finding ways to enhance the quality of their time spent at home, which could provide a boost to the already promising growth prospects for virtual reality. Real estate companies are expanding VR's role due to the coronavirus, and the use of VR will increase from those who move to offer virtual experiences like museums, art galleries, and historic sites like the Guggenheim, the Sistine Chapel, and the Great Wall of China.
Pharmaceuticals and medical equipment
Because of the emergency, there has been a rise in the need for medical attention and supplies. Despite massive investments, no effective treatments or vaccines for coronavirus have yet been developed. The government of Canada, for instance, has set aside $136 million (CAD 192 million) to fund vaccine research, development, and production on a large scale, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Logistics
As the spread of the virus has disrupted supply chains, the logistics industry has faced both a crisis and a boost as food deliveries and online shopping have come to the aid of those who have been quarantined from leaving their homes. Many businesses will likely be forced to reevaluate their supply chains and logistics as a result of the current economic downturn, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Computer-based medical care
As a result of the pandemic, every country has learned the hard way how limited its healthcare infrastructure is. Getting sick or fighting an infection is already difficult for many people, and the global economic downturn is making things even worse. Online medical care has great potential, especially in the form of mobile apps and devices that rely on artificial intelligence to provide patients with faster, easier access to treatment and diagnosis.
What are the Technologies that eliminate the need for physical contact between users?
Some members of society will advocate for no-contact policies in an effort to limit the spread of the virus, which will spur the development of novel and useful products that facilitate the adoption of such policies and make them more tolerable for human beings, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Automatic hand sanitizers, voice activated technologies, and even cashier-less grocery stores like Amazon Go all fit into this category. Researchers claim to have developed offline speech recognition that is 97 percent accurate, while the global voice and speech recognition market is projected to reach $18.8 billion by 2025. This is why Walmart's recent introduction of voice-activated grocery shopping is so timely.
Additionally, many hospitals are experimenting with robotic capabilities to increase no-contact services and decrease the spread of germs. Wuhan, China is home to a field hospital staffed entirely by robots thanks to the efforts of two companies in the field of cloud robotics systems: Mobile and CloudMinds.
Independent work/contracting
Businesses cutting back on full-time employees may increase demand for contract workers, who in turn may increase their use of freelancer marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, and Remote.com to acquire commodity services. One possible motivation is a fear of spreading germs in the workplace, as there would be fewer people there.
Sites like ChronicallyCapable.com, which aids in finding remote work for those with chronic illness, could encourage more people with chronic illnesses and immune system impairments to look for remote work. Increased demand for food delivery and online shopping is also contributing to the expansion of the gig economy, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
During this crisis, people have become more aware of the fact that currency can be a vector for the spread of disease. Some countries have gone so far as to quarantine cash in an effort to limit the spread of the pandemic, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
At the height of the outbreak, China isolated affected provinces and burned their currency. South Korea superheated their banknotes to kill off the coronavirus, and in Thailand, banks temporarily shut down their currency exchange booths nationwide out of fear of the COVID-19 virus.
Now, alternatives to paper currency are gaining popularity, just as Paytm did in India when the country demonetized the INR 500 and INR 1,000 notes in 2016. The pandemic may serve as a catalyst to bring us one step closer to digital exclusion and a cashless society, with the World Health Organization and other experts actively promoting contactless payments.
With the help of these innovations, people won't have to leave their homes to send or receive money, thereby reducing the need for human interaction, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
How did some businesses have Positive Impacts on their Business Despite Pandemic?
The Power of Teamwork
Because of the necessity of working online, people began to cooperate with each other outside of their immediate departments and even across international borders. Companies that jumped on board with new methods of working quickly saw huge increases in productivity, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
As a result of the rapid adoption of new technologies and the decentralisation of decision-making power, traditional organisational boundaries and silos have crumbled and entire departments have been integrated into a single entity, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
More people than ever before are now in the running for executive positions thanks to a widespread trend toward employee autonomy. Clarity on priorities and objectives formed the basis for a new definition of agility. The focus was clearly on the customer, and that showed in many cases of rising levels of satisfaction, covid 19 enterprise management lessons.
Congregating as a Family
Stay-at-home orders allowed for more quality time to be spent together as a family. Studies have shown that homeschooling and working from home are beneficial for both children and their parents.
Sixty-eight percent of fathers in a study conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education reported feeling closer to their children, while only one percent reported feeling less connected. Fathers and their children communicated emotionally more than ever before.
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Key Takeaways
Several businesses have already resumed some form of physical work. In the United States, for instance, workers are returning to offices at an increasing rate. Visitation to the headquarters from the consumer and retail sectors is up 80%, from the travel and logistics sector up 50%, and from the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors up 10%.
It wasn't obvious a few short months ago that business leaders would welcome a return to the office with such enthusiasm. Now, however, it's clear that they will. Fifty-two percent of the C-suite executives we surveyed are in favour of a full return to work, with employees present at least four days per week. Nine out of ten believe workers will come into the office at least three times a week.
In short, there are valid reasons for management to want employees back at the office. People's sense of community and friendships suffered as the pandemic dragged on, especially among newer employees. The use of remote tools for interdisciplinary collaboration between silos was becoming problematic.
Throughout the pandemic, executives worked tirelessly to provide their teams with crystal-clear instructions, whether that meant outlining strict strategic priorities or painstakingly breaking down complex problems. Leaders at Organizational Resilience have increased their spending on providing such transparency by nearly 80%. Non-Resilients' top brass doubled down on their efforts, but that wasn't nearly enough.
Because employees at lower levels who are empowered to make decisions are often too siloed and have individual accountabilities that are too tactical, leaders often feel the need to intervene and micromanage decisions. If upper management doesn't spell out the big picture, employees at lower levels who are capable of making good decisions end up making bad ones.
Almost half of highly resilient organisations have increased their spending on coaching, and the same proportion has increased employee recognition. The vast majority of non-resilient organisations did not increase their investment levels.
In order to speed up decision making, top performers shifted senior executives into goal-setting, decision-making, and coaching roles, a change that will be just as important for the return from remote control as it was during the pandemic.
Repeated studies have found that the sense of purpose employees feel when they are part of a community whose values they share, that does good in the world, and that recognises their contributions is the single most important factor in driving performance and productivity, even above pay and stretch goals.
Increased reliance on automated systems and other forms of technological innovation was bound to transform the nature of work in the future. COVID-19 sped things up. For instance, workers in all industries have figured out how to multitask and work together digitally to get things done.
In operations, the shift will be even more pronounced, leading to a sharper decline in manual and repetitive tasks and a corresponding increase in demand for analytical and technical assistance. Because of this change, it will be necessary to devote significant resources to motivating employees and providing them with training in new skills, much of which can be accomplished through the use of digital resources.