Coronavirus has spread unexpectedly and rapidly. While its name was thrown about in January, it wasn’t until March that the full extent of its seriousness began to make itself apparent. Around the world, countries are taking various measures to reduce its spread.

By the day, increasing numbers of countries are introducing lockdown and shelter in place schemes that encourage people to stay home. Unless your business operates in one of the sectors deemed “essential”, chances are you can’t operate as usual.

This, of course, is going to have a huge impact on your business, as well as your profits and your ability to continue expanding and growing as you may have planned to throughout the year.

The sad news is that there are many businesses out there who simply won’t be able to make it through this time. But many will and some may even do well. It’s absolutely essential that you do your utmost to keep things afloat. Hopefully, the following advice will help you to achieve this!

Keep Up to Date with Government Guidelines and Support

First things first, it’s absolutely essential that you keep up to date with different types of support that the government is offering. The government is currently working hard to save as many businesses as possible, reducing the need for lay offs and keeping companies afloat.

Perhaps the biggest initiative that has been put in place is a furloughing scheme, in which the government will pay 80% of your employees’ salaries rather than you having to lay them off. While employees are furloughed, they cannot work for you and whether you top up their wages by the extra 20% to keep them on their usual income is up to you.

But all in all, this is an attractive option for businesses who would otherwise be unable to afford to maintain staff during this difficult time.

Accept Change

As business owners, many of us are set in our ways. We’ve done the research, we’ve determined the best, most practical and most productive ways for our business to run and we’ve implemented workplace routines and workflows to ensure we’re operating to the best of our capacity and ability at all times.

It can be hard to accept change. But during a global pandemic, change is going to be necessary. You’re going to have to be more flexible with your business practices, your business operations and your general protocol in order to ensure all workers are safe.

If workers need to work from home, they need to work from home. Sure, working in-office may increase productivity. But at the moment, any work is better than nothing and accepting change could be what stops your business from going under.

Make Sure Your Employees Have the Software They Need

Working from home will require different software than may be needed to work in the office. After all, employees will need to make sure that they can communicate with one another effectively, submit all completed work digitally and track tasks easily online.

Update all employees’ devices with the software they need to complete their jobs. If in doubt, simply ask whether anyone happens to be struggling with anything and whether they can be helped in any way. Many will be able to make suggestions.

Ensure All Staff Know What They’re Doing

Make sure to brief all staff regularly so everyone knows what they need to do and what’s expected of them. You won’t be able to drop jobs onto desks at the last minute now.

Instead, organisation is going to be key to your company’s success right now and you need to ensure that all work is allocated or assigned to the right individual with a full brief well in advance of when it’s needed. This will allow time for amends, modifications and more.

You may also want to set key performance indicators, or KPIs, for each member of your team. This will establish your expectations and give them something to strive towards.

Outsource Where Necessary

Now isn’t necessarily the best time for recruitment. But if you need a job completed and don’t want to take on permanent staff to complete it, outsource. Many projects can be outsourced, including campaigns to marketing agencies who are particularly strong with martech.

Keep Morale High

Some employees will be finding the entire lockdown situation relatively difficult. This isn’t all too surprising. Some will be experiencing loneliness. Some will be experiencing boredom. Some will be experiencing an array of emotions. This is why it’s absolutely essential to keep everyone’s morale as high as possible.

Check in with everyone regularly to see how they’re doing - on a personal level as well as a professional level. Team group chats, team video calls and a bit of general chit chat can boost mood and consequently boost productivity.

Give Staff Time to Get Well

If any of your employees do become ill during this time, it’s essential that you are understanding and accommodating. You want to ensure that they feel supported in their time of need and you need to give them sufficient time to recover before returning to work.

If you don’t already have sick pay in place, now is an important time to implement it. Reduce pressure to return to work and ensure that they are truly well and up to the job before settling them back in.

This really is a difficult time we’re living through. It’s strange. It’s unprecedented. Many of us feel we haven’t had sufficient time to prepare for it. But all in all, many of us will pull through it and so will our businesses.

You just need to make sure that you’re running things the right way through the duration of the pandemic and the lockdown. Sure, it isn’t going to be the easiest or most profitable year.

But progression can wait until the future. For now, the above advice should help to tide you, your business and your employees over until the situation improves!