What will the "Second Wave" mean for your business?
The article below speaks to the recent resurgence of Covid-19 in Melbourne Australia. Australia has proven to be one of the leaders in the battle against Covid-19.
Their policies allowed them to get the infection growth under control early and ultimately drive infection rates down. Like many jurisdictions, they were also subject to significant restrictions on movement and business which may have lasting economic effects. After all of that focus and hard work, it appears that Melbourne is seeing a second wave and looks to be returning to government sanctioned lockdowns again.
If Covid-19 has taught us one lesson, it’s that we don’t really know what the future holds in our battle against this virus. In our jurisdiction here in BC, Canada, we’ve had great success in controlling the spread through disciplined public information campaigns, aggressive contact tracing and wide reaching travel restrictions. If world news is to be repeated here, we can fully expect a second wave in Canada sometime soon. If you’re in the US, you’re likely to still be living in the first wave and it’s not looking good by any scientific measure.
In Canada, the federal and provincial governments have been liberal in their desire to shovel money off of the back of the proverbial truck. Most citizens here feel lucky to have a federal support systems and the benefits to business in the form of tax deferrals and wage and rent subsidies have managed to help many businesses walk the fine line between success and failure. Canadians have largely been compliant when public health officials have asked us each to sacrifice personally for the common good.
But what does this uncertainty mean in the future. Will your business be able to survive a second lockdown? Will the next lockdown be the same as the last? Will your customers, suppliers and partners be able (or even want to) survive the next round? Many of our clients are barely coming out of the first lockdown (I use the term liberally, as our “lockdown” has been very modest when compared to many other jurisdictions) and are already worried about what the next round may look like.
Our niche consulting practice is focused on helping businesses safely embrace the power of the distributed workforce and all that it entails. Our practice includes both technical and human factors. To help our clients make sense of this all, we recently launched a consulting program for Covid-19 lessons learned. This program was developed at the request of several of our clients. The objectves are as follows:
Capture and crystallize the lessons learned from our last lockdown and work from home (WFH) experiment
Identify what worked well for you so you can do more of that in the future
Identify areas for improvement so you can remove those roadblocks before the next lockdown
Explore big picture ideas about the ways you can reinvent your business and your team members contribute to your business
Understand the impact of your WFH experience on your clients and partner
Create the framework of an action plan that. can help your organization move quicker and be more agile when and if a Covid-19 lockdown returns.
Fore additional reference on the recent resurgence of virus in Melbourne, visit the CBC article here.
Click to learn more about our Covid-19 Learned Workshops for Business Leaders.