India is likely to face the fourth wave of Covid-19 around June this year, according to research reports from IIT, Kanpur. Covid-19 has brought a major crisis to many businesses around the country. There was a major downfall in almost every business leading to unemployment, especially during the severe pandemic of the first wave. However, post-Covid-19 second wave, the organizational structure, and employment terms have been redesigned in a way to overcome the Covid-19 crisis.
We were almost in the worst phase of the pandemic during Covid-19's first and second waves and at least now after the third wave, the impact on businesses has been reasonably controlled. Most companies are getting into their old form of action to operate from work from home and office. However everything is in the form of every business, and the outlook for this fall remains constant to prepare for. Even at this moment, Covid-19 is not at all expected to behave in a different pattern than earlier. No matter the current situation and medical advancements, studies found that as the calendar turns out to July this year, the Covid-19 4th wave is expected to hit the world.
As a leading background verification company in Hyderabad, we have seen the pandemic from an angle where every business downfall or crisis was closely observed. After all our close observations and analysis, we have figured out the core factors that are to be addressed to overcome the crisis in the fourth wave. So, let us understand what a business should do?
Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on small businesses outcomes and expectations.
While we had started the survey, our first goal turned out to be the small business and their approaches followed during the pandemic crisis. In this process, the three observations which we felt the need for addressing were of the highest priority. These include:
- How are the businesses adjusting to the economic disruptions?
- How long have they been expecting the crisis and is it affecting their decisions?
- How do the alternative policy proposals impact their resilience?
By the time we are into the survey, we found that 43% of businesses had temporarily closed
due to Covid-19. This was observed regardless of the business type and services and various industries with retail, arts, entertainment, personal services, food services, and the list go on. In contrast, finance, professional services, and real estate-related businesses experience comparatively less disruption for their flexibility to remote production.
There are several steps most companies are following to overcome the economic crisis. These practices include smart policies for remote work, anticipating operational read blocks, and addressing the social impacts of health emergencies.
1. Developing an infrastructure for remote Work:
Working remotely creates a hectic environment unless it is not planned or organized well. Hence sketch an action plan for your organization, and allocate a manager or team lead who should be the sole responsible person for all the information sharing.
Another important aspect is to keep up the economic activity to overcome the negative impact of economic rise. A widespread spike of the virus can lead to more shutdowns. This impacts the work of all individuals working from the office and home.
2. Maintaining supply chain strength
Supply chains are one of the constant sources of business continuity. Post covid or during the pandemic, there were many disruptions in supply chain management. Recent studies from BSI presented that about 45% of business owners are seeking supply chain management. Hitting the human elements of the supply chain further affects as they consumers stockpile goods, and logistical companies struggle to meet the supply demands.
Businesses should always maintain a backup supply chain in different locations to maintain the supply chain constantly. Above all adapting to the changes quickly and flexibly is another key to business continuity.
To achieve this more consistently, employ the early warning systems with supply chain risk assessment alert tools. Check out the supply chain management best practices and try incorporating them into your system.
3. Continuity Planning
For any business whether small-scale or large-scale, organizational structure plays a major role to analyse the probabilistic impacts. Companies need to develop a measured approach to protect employees and operations that help in reducing the risk factors.
At each step, we need to analyze
- What are the potential disruptions in the business?
- How work from home affects the product or service delivery?
- Is there any need for updates to the Network System?
These questions, if asked periodically, help in yielding the most awaited success in the long run.
4. Prepare Yourself for Security configurations
Pandemics have attracted most of the cybercriminals who took the advantage of this crisis to affect the systems developed. In 2020, researchers detected coronavirus-specific threats which include malicious files disguised with some names suggesting the information to know about Covid. On clicking those, the user landed in some suspicious links from which much destruction, block or modification, or deletion of data took place.
Hence it was suggested to follow some tips for protecting businesses from security threats while working from home.
Make your cyber security team more cautious about the vulnerabilities of N sources. Incorporate the proper cyber security team management activities to make the security process continuous and stronger.
5. Help your Team to get a comfortable Home office
Your team is your source of potential outputs. If the pandemic hits again in June, we might get back to the past work-from-home procedures. Management needs to figure out the logistics that are affected in the production from employees and should facilitate them with the necessary home office setup. Working from home may not be the same for all, so help employees who are grappling with stress, uncertainty, and psychological isolation. These gestures of care and responsibility toward employees are essential to creating long-term loyalty and maintaining a cohesive culture.
Get Ready
Post Covid-19, many things went out of our control. So get ready for what comes next. Follow these simple three pillars, Adapt, Plan and Train. Identify the key necessities and get the areas for improvement. List and prioritize the events to take and then schedule for future exercises by carefully executing each step.