Get Back to Business: Your Post-COVID Plan for 2020
How to Outpace Your Competition By Acting Now
As government leaders begin talking about opening up local economies again, it’s important for business leaders to get plans in place. At PlayBook, we’re advising clients to build a plan that will carry them through the next 12–24 months.
Why 12–24 months?
Given the public information as of mid-April, there is hope for vaccine availability in 12–18 months. Then add time for the logistics of getting a population vaccinated. We will have gone through at least one more COVID wave by then, with a greater likelihood of 2–3 waves. To minimize the impact of those recurrences — both the human and economic costs — most local and state governments will likely establish rules that cautiously bring crowds back to our gathering places. Timing and levels of restrictions should depend on building herd immunity as well as a community’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to new outbreaks:
- Widespread testing — for the virus and antibodies/immunity
- Adequate stores of PPE and other healthcare resources
- Robust contact tracing
- Effective quarantine measures
“…the big winners out of COVID-19 will be those who take a step back from the fray, identify the bigger opportunities, and act fast.”
What will be different as states re-open for business?
It’s going to vary state-by-state and information may change rapidly as we’ve seen in the past two months. So stay informed of your local guidelines and rules. Here are the kinds of roll-out restrictions we’re seeing so far:
- Mask requirements — for employees and customers
- Physical distancing — same as what we’re seeing required in grocery and other essential stores now.
- 100% employee testing — everyone, repeatedly as needed
- Employee sick time support — this may range from paid sick leave to healthcare coverage, but is aimed to ensure that COVID+ workers don’t feel like they have no option but to work while sick, creating cluster threats.
- Transmission-limiting behaviors, systems, policies & processes
What you can do now to prepare
For the past month, many of us have found ourselves trying to catch up to ever-changing requirements. Now is the time to get ahead of the curve.
If you’re currently defined as an essential business, you’ve already been adjusting for compliance and safety. Most likely, though, your team quickly designed a storefront layout and process as a short-term response. Now you can challenge that team to improve what’s currently in place.
- Streamline so customers get in the store faster, feel safe and comfortable spending more time there, and check out quickly.
- Empathize — design the “new normal” customer experience from their perspective. What will the customer be feeling? What will they need now that’s different from before? How do you meet their first-tier need (your product or service) and the deeper psychological needs at play, too? This has to include some kind of physical assurance or default design for distancing.
- Improve signage to clearly set customer expectations.
- Train employees so everyone’s on the same page on new protocols. Show them what it needs to look like, explain why (so they can explain it to customers), and take the time to observe and coach them so they feel supported.
Change is hard and some people will naturally resist. How can you reward those who comply and how will you reinforce the new requirements in positive ways?
The upside to being a non-essential business today
If your company is not yet open for business, or working in limited ways (e.g. restaurant take-out only), this is a great time to sketch out how you’ll re-open safely. Not only will this be required, but it will be a signal to employees that you deeply care about them. Plus, a business that establishes these common sense safety protocols will be a baseline for getting your customer base back.
This might include reducing the number of tables in your restaurant or bar while increasing your kitchen capacity to bump up ongoing take-out and delivery business even more. You could build an online store for your boutique retail shop and ramp in-store “quick pick-up”.
For those fortunate enough to be included in the SBA’s first-round Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), you can enlist your front line team to help design the company’s post-COVID reality. It’s a great way to understand their concerns and needs, empower them to think of workable solutions, and apply some of those PPP forgiveness hours in productive ways.
You get a once-in-a-lifetime gift: Apply the full force of your team, fresh back from furlough, to rebuild your business the way you’ve always imagined it. If they’re not allowed to work with customers right now, aim them at working on your business.
Don’t miss the big opportunity here
For most people, this crisis has been an unwelcome disrupter. But others of us see it as the unexpected opportunity to (re)build our businesses — to step back and create new strategies to gain market share, increase customer loyalty, and strengthen our teams and overall operations.
Before you reconfigure the workplace for COVID-era compliance, take time to assess the barriers to being #1 in your market and build a winning strategy into the work you’ll do to re-open your doors.
How can your store layout not only maintain physical distancing but showcase your wares more effectively and drive bigger sales faster? How can you improve customer service so that everyone feels safe and you exceed client’s expectations every time?
What have you known should change to make your organization stronger, but never had the urgent reason to compel the team to do it? Now that you have endured the pain of standing up an online presence, or learned how to effectively manage teams remotely, does it make sense to double down and shutter expensive physical space you’ve proven you can do without?
Where else can you pivot and re-prioritize resources so that decisions made now will drive the company to the vision that you now have for your future? What have you noticed about neglected customers, markets, or adjacent lines of business that could differentiate your company going forward?
React, Respond, or Initiate
In the first two weeks of this crisis, most of us reacted. In the next two weeks, many started responding — reconfiguring standard operations to comply with government guidelines. But the big winners out of COVID-19 will be those who take a step back from the fray, identify the bigger opportunities, and act fast. They are the ones who ask, “What can I do now that will put the company in a better position on the other side of this?”
So, how are you spending you time?
