As North Texas and cities around the country enter a period of reopening, leaders across industries are faced with restarting their engines at unprecedented speed — and yet, no one can simply turn on what they turned off.
With little that is certain about the progression of COVID-19 and the social, political and fiscal actions it will drive, there’s only one thing that’s for sure — companies need a solid strategy for outmaneuvering uncertainty.
Reopening is more than a restart. It is the beginning of a new era of business, and what we do now will determine what kind of future that is. In that way, both the optimist and opportunist in me will tell you this is a chance for reinvention. Tapping not only our research but also our own experience navigating what’s next, we advise clients to focus on five key areas:
Put People First
Our people are relying upon us — their employers — to put their safety and wellbeing first. There is so much anxiety right now — as one data point, we found that 67% of furloughed workers reported a decline in their mental health since the outbreak began.
Whether jobs continue to be performed at home — as could be the case for as many of 37% of U.S. jobs — or are restarted in the workplace, the stress won’t end in the reopening.
We are all going through this together, but everyone is dealing with different circumstances. Some are grieving. Some are worried about partners working on the frontlines. Some have loved ones in nursing homes. Attention to the mental and emotional wellbeing of our people is paramount and getting to know what our people’s challenges are is essential to creating new workplaces built on trust.
Some key areas of focus should include:
- Turn furloughed workers into flexible workers, retraining them in skills that will enable them to refocus on areas of higher demand.
- Revisit policies, focusing on the most vulnerable groups, such as temporary workers, people with disabilities, single parents or those who lack adequate health benefits.
- Leverage the many technology platforms that help match workers with safe childcare options.
- Offer mental health and wellbeing programs.
Design Spaces That Work
Whether your people are working remotely or in offices, your ability to keep them safe is something you’ll be measured by. A successful reopening will be determined largely by how ready and confident your people are.
Our research shows that 75% of workers feel comfortable working from home, but more than 50% have not yet established a good work from home routine.
Redesign work to allow for sustained remote working and retrain managers to support new hybrid teams. Extend security protocols for data, network, and systems to include personal devices and collaboration tools. Remote work carries with it new needs to monitor employees; be absolutely transparent about how you keep the resulting data private as well as the intended employee benefits.
For those coming back to offices, create not just a safe environment, but a comfortable and stress-managed one. Tech can help you here, from thermal scanners to digital tools that help to track employee health and organize employee shifts to maintain social distancing.
Solve in Phases
Keep in mind that we’re not going back to normal, and we all must redesign for business as unusual. This should be done with phases, with the ability to nimbly turn on a dime when the next COVID-19 curveball is thrown.
First, using financial as well as calendar targets, separate the stages by key milestones that must be hit — both good and bad. Build in contingencies for reversing course. At every stage, maintain the ability to secure your systems and workplaces.
Second, prioritize reopening the parts of your business that will generate income fastest to fuel future growth.
Third, use this opportunity to take a hard look at your operations to determine what changes you want to make. Include new technology adoption in your recovery plan. Now is the time to create intelligent and holistic supply chains capable of adapting to unanticipated market dynamics.
Fourth, make sure your leadership team has the skills needed for reopening and beyond. Your leaders are going to need to share a passion for change and new opportunities, which means identifying and empowering your most entrepreneurial and inclusive leaders.
Commit to an Elastic Cost Structure
Because staying in business requires liquidity, it’s tempting to hunker down and hoard cash. Instead, commit to an elastic cost structure. Lock down short-term cost reductions and invest in greater data intelligence to better adjust cost structures and manage liquidity. Apply the cash you saved to new growth opportunities and opportunistic M&As. The winners from the Great Recession were the ones who moved strategically and with agility.
Get Future-Ready
We’ve seen that some of the winners in the last two months are the ones who could seamlessly move their organizations from the analogue to the digital world. The most common thing clients tell me is that they wished they had moved more aggressively to upload their operations into the cloud. This moment is their second chance. Now is the time to increase capabilities in ecommerce and security by becoming more digital, data-driven and in the cloud. We all knew machine-learning automation was the future; COVID-19 is only accelerated that future.
These strategies to outmaneuver uncertainty will create organizations that one day look back on the crisis as the darkness before the dawn. Those that reinvent themselves — their processes, customer experiences, employee and social contracts — will win.
Jorge Corral is the Dallas office managing director of Accenture and focuses on bringing innovation to clients, attracting top talent and strengthening the company’s impact in the North Texas community.
