The Importance Of Analyzing Your Business Post-COVID

You don’t have to have the business insight of Steve Jobs to know that the world of business has been fundamentally and profoundly altered in the last two years. Not only is the COVID-19 pandemic the most significant public health crisis in more than a century, but it has also been one of the most disruptive forces the global marketplace has seen in the modern era.  

And that means that doing business in the post-COVID era will not be business as usual. To thrive in this new normal, it’s imperative the business owners and decision-makers conduct a comprehensive analysis of their operations and their business model in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Assessing Automation

One of the preeminent reasons why the pandemic has had such a devastating impact on business is that the public health threat has required many businesses either to shutter their doors or to scale back operations significantly as employees isolated at home.

Though many of the lockdowns have lifted or eased, however, the threat of the next surge precipitating a new wave of shutdowns lingers. For this reason, business leaders must conduct a technological analysis of their operations, including identifying opportunities to automate business processes.

By capitalizing on opportunities to automate, companies are better insulated from future threats, including not only the resurgence of the pandemic but also other unknown risks that might make on-campus work untenable.

Staffing & Employee Needs Analysis

To be sure, the pandemic has brought to light the necessity of ensuring that your company’s technologies can accommodate significant operational disruptions, including a significantly downsized on-site workforce. 

But the outbreak has also instigated substantial changes in the modern workforce. The fear of the virus, the effects of school closures, and the discovery that remote work is not only feasible but, for many, highly desirable, means that employers must be willing to adapt their business model if they wish to retain employees and recruit new talent. 

In the post-pandemic era, for instance, many workers are seeking to continue working from home, and are even willing to leave their current employer to have that opportunity. For these workers, the virtual office space offers both the safety and the convenience that they may not be able to enjoy in the physical office. 

Thus, performing well post-COVID will require a review of your employees’ current needs, including an assessment of their perspectives on remote work. This could well require transition to the virtual office environment for most, if not all, of your employees.

To ensure the efficacy of this transition to a more permanent remote work model, however, you’re also going to need to assess your processes for recruiting, training, and managing remote workers. Without this comprehensive analysis of your staffing processes in the aftermath of the pandemic and in preparation for the transition to remote work, you may well be setting yourself and your company up for an array of staffing challenges, including problems with the recruiting of employees suited to remote work and the training of established employees for the virtual office space. This can, in turn, escalate into the problem of reactive hiring, as employers scramble to quickly fill labor gaps and staff the digital workplace. Companies may however use the help of EORs, who can take the burden of employing workers on behalf of their client companies.

To mitigate the likelihood of reactive hiring, inadequate staffing, and misalignment between employees and their job functions will likely include significant alterations to your training and onboarding processes. New and established employees alike will typically need specialized support when learning how to maintain productivity and performance while working from home.

Looking Outward

As you analyze your business to prepare for excellence in the post-COVID world, assessing internal operations, from the state of your automated technologies to the evolving needs of your employees, will not be sufficient. 

You will also need to conduct a comprehensive external analysis, evaluating both your target market and your business partnerships in this post-pandemic era. For example, if your business operates on an international scale, then you will need to assess how the pandemic has impacted your global partners and clients. 

For example, partner organizations may have had to modify expansion plans to protect long-standing growth targets while adapting to the impacts of the pandemic. 

Similarly, the international organizations with whom your company has partnered may have themselves transitioned to a fully work-from-home business model. And this can have a significant impact on business operations, particularly if partners, stakeholders, and clients are more broadly distributed worldwide. 

By analyzing how your internal affiliates and target markets have been impacted by or responded to the pandemic, you will be better able to modify traditional practices to ensure continuity of workflow and quality of performance, no matter where your stakeholders are in the wake of the pandemic and how their needs, standards, and processes might have changed in response to it.

The Takeaway

The COVID-19 pandemic has well and truly put an end to “business as usual.” From restrictions on international travel to prolonged and repeated lockdowns to the public health threat of the virus itself, business owners and leaders have been forced to revamp their business models in the face of this new normal. Responding to the changed reality of our post-COVID world, however, requires an evidence-based strategy. And that means engaging in the comprehensive analysis of the internal and external operations of your company, examining how automation technologies, employee management and recruiting, and relationships with partners and clients can be altered and optimized in the aftermath of COVID-19.