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5 Ways to Pandemic-Proof Your Business

With businesses shutting down, people in panic, it's important to know how to keep your business afloat.

By Mikkie MillsPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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It's still too early to say what exactly the lasting effects of coronavirus will be. The only certainty is that things will never go back to exactly the way they were. In order for businesses to survive in the age of coronavirus, they need to adapt. Here are just a few areas to focus on if you are trying to corona-proof your business.

Web Presence

Make sure you have a strong web presence. In the event of another mass-quarantine event, your only way to access new customers and stay in touch with old ones will be through the internet. You cannot rely on being available to answer phone calls or make physical visits. Your website will act as a central hub for business, communication and important announcements, so make sure that your web design Malta is the best it can possibly be.

Delivery

Whatever your product or service is, it is now past time to assess your delivery options. The past few months have revealed many strengths but also many key vulnerabilities in delivery systems. In order for business to continue to run as smoothly as possible, you may have to have a hands-free delivery system, or at the very least have a backup plan to deliver your product when clients cannot come to you. You cannot prepare for every impossible eventuality, but if there is one thing that everyone has learned from the past few months, it's that you need to be flexible and able to adapt to extraordinary circumstances.

Remote Working

Almost overnight, the ability to work remotely went from being a nice but unnecessary perk to a near-vital safety feature. The truth is, there are many benefits to remote working, even when there isn't a pandemic sweeping through the nation. It allows you to hire from a broader pool of applicants, and it means you can keep a smaller physical office. Make sure that you have a secure system for remote work, and make sure that system is stable. Many systems were overwhelmed by the sudden influx of traffic when coronavirus hit, so make absolutely sure that yours is robust enough to handle the necessary traffic.

Flexible Time Off

Paid time off is also going to be hugely important going forward. In the future, you can absolutely potential employees to ask how your company handled the pandemic, and whether you offered paid time off to workers. Many of them will have suffered at the hands of companies that didn't have plans to deal with the pandemic, so you must show that you do. The best employees are going to demand better, in terms of paid time off and leave plans.

Cash Buffers

The best way to pandemic-proof your business is to have a generous cash buffer to keep your head above water in a time of crisis. You want to think carefully about how long your business can survive in the event of a total shutdown and potentially a complete lack of revenue incoming. What used to be a rainy day fund now needs to be a rainy month fund or even a rainy quarter fund. It is hard to predict when and if something like this will happen again. If your industry wasn't affected this time, don't assume that you are safe; it could be worse, or at least completely different next time.

The huge caveat for all this advice is exactly what was said at the start of the article. We just don't know what the long-term effects of this virus will be. Perhaps the world really will go back to the way it was in just a few weeks. More likely, though, there will be some substantial shifts. The spread of coronavirus has had global effects; no one in the world is immune to those effects. Whether the shift is small or large there will, inevitably be a paradigm shift. In order for businesses to survive and thrive, they will need to be ready for those changes.

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