Negosentro | What Problems Will Businesses Face in 2021 due to COVID-19? | If you think 2020 was challenging (and it most certainly was), you should take a closer look at what we’re going through this year. From finance to HSE and HR, all departments have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Every single aspect of business is affected by the consequences of the pandemic and many businesses are struggling to cope with them. We’re hoping that the vaccines will help us return to the life we had before the pandemic broke out last year, but they are still not available to most of the world population, which means the virus is here to stay, at least for a bit longer. That also means that challenges will continue to exist, while some new ones can be expected as a consequence of this situation. So, let’s take a look at some of the problems businesses will need to face in 2021.
Challenges we’ve already faced
Some major challenges from last year remain the main obstacles in this year, too. For example, remote work will continue to be the safest and preferable method of working. The US saw a major increase in remote work usage last year and the trend is likely to continue. While some people are slowly returning to the workplace, hybrid models are being analyzed for most of employees in order to minimize the risk of the virus. Also, employee management and mental health issues are still prominent. The task of keeping people engaged, motivated, while driving innovation with distributed teams is even more difficult now, sine people have been isolated for so long.
Coaching 1-on-1
Some studies suggest that remote workers can be highly engaged with their work provided they receive frequent feedback from their bosses. This feedback should be even more frequent now, which means the leaders will have to invest much more time in this, on top of dealing with all other challenges. It also implies that companies need to change their MO to embrace the challenges of transition. One of the ways to overcome this problem is to hire one of the reputable management consulting firms to help drive the right culture and address specific issues that have arisen.
Offering alternatives
It’s vital that companies offer a range of tools to improve collaboration, engagement and innovation in remote work. The hybrid workplaces will need to maintain these tools and try to find more ways to boost their physical organization and the virtual one. Apart from the traditional networking events and webinars, such tools facilitate remote workers’ engagement and reduce communication and travel costs, which is something each business will appreciate in this time of crisis.
Keeping the team agile and self-organized
Another challenge will be to keep the team agile and self-organized despite the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. This task will be particularly difficult for those businesses that don’t have agile practices deeply embedded in their enterprise operating models. It will be increasingly challenging for them to become self-organized, which means that the leaders would need to increase their facilitation skills to enable team self-organization. This, in turn, means that leaders will have less time to deal with other issues and aspects of their job.
Dealing with the aftershocks of COVID-19
We’ve established that the issues with COVID for businesses are far from over. Actually, experts agree that it will take months for the vaccines to have an impact on the number of cases. What’s more, it’s likely that this is now an epidemic, which basically means that even with a vaccine, it will be here to stay. The virus has already mutated several times and there is a chance that by next year the current vaccine will no longer be effective. That means that people will be again susceptible to the virus, which means businesses will have to adapt even more. The aftershocks will remain, that much we know.
Apart from making sure that they are taking the right procedures to keep their company safe from this problem, businesses will also have to make sure they survive in these new circumstances. However, safety comes first and companies need to do whatever they can to protect their most valuable assets, i.e. their employees. It’s only with healthy and safe employees that a company can thrive, even in such a difficult period.
