Strategies to Mitigate Covid-19 Effects
The outbreak of Covid-19 has created insurmountable problems for corporates, countries, and the global economy. The covid-19 pandemic is exceptional from other business in terms in terms of extreme uncertainty levels and scope. Most corporate entities have already witnessed significant disruption to the supply chain and a halt to the partial or total business operations. While business leaders experience a different crisis, the Covid-19 has tested them to the limit. Since the effects of scourge vary across industries, the response also differs from one industry to the other (Awasthi, 2020). Nonetheless, preparation is essential in managing any crisis affecting business, and the following strategies are vital in helping their firms withstand the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis.
Prioritize Employees Safety
A people-first mindset should be the first mitigation strategy in the covid-19 pandemic to guarantee the safety and well-being of its workforce. Employees cannot adequately perform their responsibility effectively if their safety and well-being are compromised. Therefore, at the onset and during a pandemic event such as coronavirus, the safety of workers should be given priority. More importantly, organizations must monitor the situation and provide the necessary support for employees and a safe workplace for employees undertaking critical functions. The support may include providing access to timely and updated information and services from internal and external sources transportation for late hours and extended child care.
Timely communication is essential in raising awareness and establish a standard of care for sick employees. For effective dissemination of critical information, the organization must validate emergency notification systems and test them regularly to ensure their functionality (Madhav et al. 2017). Alternative channels of communication, such as social media, should be actively used to deliver timely updated information. Delivery of covid-19 related training is essential in enhancing the preparedness of employees and alleviates any concerns.
Geographical Segmentation of Functions
The organization should also plan to segment business functions and activities based on the geographical prevalence of the covid-19 cases. Access to countries severely impacted by the pandemic to be limited or halted for some time. The business impact analysis should have to be undertaken to determine a chain of functions and activities and the interdependencies to inform practical mitigation measures (Corbet, Larkin, & Lucey, 2020). In planning for a covid-19 pandemic, geographical concentration of these vital activities and functions must be accorded closer attention for purposes of segmenting them for the transfer of work to alternative sites and locations. Since the supply chain has already been disrupted, diversifying supplier base is vital for any prudent risk manager to increased exposure to regional outages and avoiding failures from a single point.
Investing in Technology
Remote working and virtual collaboration are essential in mitigating the effects of a covid-19 pandemic on an organization. Since the pandemic requires people to stay at home to limit exposure of employees and contain the spread of disease, investing in technology will facilitate employees to work from home by activating a firm’s remote working capabilities (Kraemer et al. 2020). In contrast to most epidemic events as earthquake and hurricane events, which prompt remote working, the covid-19 pandemic has led to total lockdown in some cities and even shutdown of the company facilities in some areas. This has forced a large number of employees to perform their responsibilities remotely for an extended period. As a consequence, remote connectivity networks are overloaded with heavier than usual traffic, thus causing access issues.
Investing in technology is vital in mitigating the overload to the connectivity network and allows employees to collaborate virtually and work remotely. The process starts by assessing the current and required bandwidth to support the increased traffic of remotely working employees. It also involves performing periodic testing of network stress and identifying a critical task that cannot be performed remotely at home (Deshpande et al. 2016). However, it is worth noting that remote working is a viable option for some service sectors than others, such as manufacturing.
Assessing Third-Party Reliance
The interconnectedness on with parties such as cloud services providers, outsourcing has become prominent in organizations. The typical third parties include vendors and suppliers, aggressors, data processors, and payment processors to deliver services and products. It is worth noting that pandemic risks also impact third parties. Therefore, companies should have a thorough knowledge of their critical third parties, including their level of resilient to pandemic events (Sarkar et al. 2019). This is vital in developing alternative plans, such as insourcing strategies or substitutability in the event of a critical third party is impaired to provide the needed product or services. The approach will ensure that organization has continued access to the required products and services in the course of the covid-19 pandemic.
The organization should also align their third party plans and those of their alternative plans. On the converse, it is paramount that companies determine cases with opportunities to rely on specific third parties whose operations are dispersed geographically to help with critical activities that internally executed. Notably, while planning for alternative third parties, firms must be wary that competitors and peers may also be interested in the same third parties to help them in time of market contagion, thus resulting in the risk of concentration (Madhav et al. 2017). Companies must also assess the capacity of third parties in consideration of market dependencies. Where necessary, the firm can explore an opportunity to include a contractual clause to prioritize it for products and services against competitors.
Customer Engagement
As noted in some epidemics such as earthquakes, most customers tend to discontinue using particular services or products during disruptions. This is particularly evident in disruptions that are beyond the control of the company and involve life safety concerns rather than controllable or preventable ones such as system glimpses. Covid-19 pandemic qualifies under these disruptions; hence timely updates and transparency are vital in engaging the customer and sustains continued use of the products or services (Madhav et al. 2017). The use of multiple channels is recommended to reinforce customer interests as a priority and providing information to alleviate any concerns of customers. Engaged communication is critical in answering questions about the supply chain of the firm, particularly for resources sourced from areas affected by the covid-19 pandemic. Customers are also questioning the potential risks of those resources on their life after using company services and products. These require well-documented frequently asked questions disseminated in multiple channels to address the concerns of customers to ensure continued use of company products and services.
Conclusion
The paper has identified and explained essential strategies a firm can use to mitigate the effects of covid-19 on business performance. While it is acknowledged that Covid-19 is affecting every firm, the results vary across industries and sectors. The critical mitigation measures include investing in technology, engaging customers, the geographical segmentation of activities and functions, and assessing firm reliance on third parties. However, though not discussed, firms need to team up with the public sector and health officials, leverage a command center for effective governance of the pandemic, and developing a robust communication strategy.
References
Awasthi, A. (2020). Disaster Recovery-Foundation Pillars. Int Sci Res, 9(1), 1360-1362.
Corbet, S., Larkin, C. J., & Lucey, B. M. (2020). The Contagion Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Gold and Cryptocurrencies. Available at SSRN 3564443.
Deshpande, A., Sharp, H., Barroca, L., & Gregory, P. (2016). Remote working and collaboration in agile teams.
Kraemer, M. U., Yang, C. H., Gutierrez, B., Wu, C. H., Klein, B., Pigott, D. M., … & Brownstein, J. S. (2020). The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China. Science.
Madhav, N., Oppenheim, B., Gallivan, M., Mulembakani, P., Rubin, E., & Wolfe, N. (2017). Pandemics: risks, impacts, and mitigation. In Disease Control Priorities: Improving Health and Reducing Poverty. 3rd edition. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.
Sarkar, R., Narang, K., Sharma, P., Pal, I., & Dikshit, A. (2019). Risk Identification, Assessment, and Disaster Risk Reduction. An Interdisciplinary Approach for Disaster Resilience and Sustainability, 289.
Hi Shanna Sherman,
I enjoyed reading your post. I agree with you when you say that strategic planning is essential lest the project will experience failure. Strategic planning enables nurse leaders to strategically allocate resources available. A strategic plan establishes the direction of a given project, and it helps to align the objectives of the project with the mission and vision of the company. The strategic plan also enables a nurse leader to capitalize on the opportunities and strengths that have been identified through the SWOT analysis. For instance, in the strategic plan, the nurse leaders will be able to plan how they will make use of the partnership they are entering to support their organization. I also agree with you that strategic planning helps the nurse leaders understand how to reduce the weaknesses and manage the threats. For instance, if the company has a weakness of a shortage of employees, then hiring new employees will be in the strategic plan. Weaknesses usually slow down or even leads to project failure. Therefore, the strategic plan helps the leaders understand how to eliminate threats. For instance, the threat of competitors can be managed by stabilizing prices or ensuring quality services to beat the competition.
References
Hall, Feyza. (2013). The Importance of Strategic Planning.
Sammut-Bonnici, Tanya & Galea, David. (2015). SWOT Analysis. 10.1002/9781118785317.weom120103.