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MARCH 2021 Download this Article
Reacting to the uncertainty like the COVID pandemic is only natural. It is once in a lifetime crisis, never envisaged in best of risk planning schools.
Out of many tactical options available to a company, only one option can strategically sail the ship through the storm. Positive leadership can lead; looking far ahead into the future is the need of the hour.
The business columns are filled with news of redundancies and closures, even after subsequent governments have supported the businesses. OECD countries have helped their businesses with the bailout of nearly 20% of their GDP.
So, where’s the trick? Like all crisis times, what naturally comes to the fore is to shed weight. Hence, it is an excellent time to evaluate the redundancies in our organisations and our personal lives.
It starts with corporates; excess weight carried all this while in cost and manpower needs evaluation. Already axe has fallen on many employees.
Indeed, they all would have gone through the exercise rigorously and reluctantly let people go. Scoping to reduce redundancies is exceedingly difficult, as every department feels it is crucial.
Instead, we have evidence today that those organizations that have survived are lean and thin.
Already during the pandemic, companies have come out as "no-nonsense" and "to-the-point." With the strip down version, they are trying to run the show.
Only essentials have prevailed, and it ‘nice to have’ been trashed to reduce corporate clutter. It meant layoffs. Though harsh as it is, more layoffs are coming anyway, as millions of large and small businesses are still struggling.
Pandemic is here to stay, and new ways need to be found and invented. The culture of hire and fire will work for the benefit of none. It is the 21st century, and new ways of managing human resources are the need of the hour.
On the positive side, instead of lay-offs, companies can rebuild the "loyalty" of their employees by reskilling and upgrade. Since the modern management system have never understood the power of loyalty, this is the time. Important battles have are won and lost just by relying on loyalty.
There is no doubt; it will give companies an unbeatable competitive edge in the world after COVID.
Companies can measure the systems that are under stress on the management front, those which worked and those which remained un-utilized. There is a scope for clearing up and free-up resources in this evaluation and reallocate them.
As survival instinct requires, the most efficient ways and effective means come into play in times of crisis, naturally.
In this new normal, it is already been achieved with minor tweaks. We got an example around us in our company, neighbourhood and country.
In good times, if this change was to be invented and applied, the cost to the company incurred just for hiring the change management consultants would have been a deterrent.
Instead, a new organization has been metamorphized and reconstructed as a natural outcome of this crisis.
While we are exploring positive options, one and all need to shed their ego, it has crept unsuspectedly in our “modern era of business and personal life.”
But the bad news is that it will not survive this crisis. The future holds for only those who are flexible and humble, whether it’s an organization or an individual.
In the next step, it is only a matter of being positively proactive and extracting deep learning from this crisis. Smarter companies will continue to utilize this time to introspect and redefine their ways of working for a brighter future.
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