Business Tips

Steps you can use to prepare for another epidemic
or to just have a plan in place for the future?

Step 1: Readiness Assessments

• Make sure you have enough capital to get you through a 2-4 month period.
• What are your options for extending loans, terms, contracts and other short term obligations.
• Evaluate your business continuity program against a best practice standard and identify where gaps exist.
• During this pandemic write down or list out what worked and what didn't work through these difficult times. Start thinking of solutions to prepare you if this were to occur again.
• Collect best practices already shared by the government or other successful business owners. How you can put those into practice with your employees?
• A 10-20 FAQ for employee's and manager's to be able to answer questions.

Step 2: The Risk Management Plan

• Take time an create a list of obstacles your business struggled through and create short & long term goals.
• Create a mitigation plan just in case you were to go through the same or another situation again.
• Mitigation plan should include financial security, employee safety, cost reduction, delivery method’s, strategies to encourage sales, etc….
• Keep your employees updated with information at all times to create a sense of security and creating reliance of open communication at all times.

Step 3: Evaluate potential new business procedures

• Develop an infrastructure for remote work
• Encourage online sales
• Online meetings
• Turn to third parties such as doordash, hello fresh and e-commerce websites.
• People are now at home looking for informative or entertaining clips
• Is it cost effective to reduce operating hours or assign employees to tasks they can complete from home.
• With the new procedures, evaluate what policies need to be reviewed and/or changed.
• With the changes in policy and work conditions make sure to keep an eye on employees safety and concerns. Create a way where they can make incident reports to stay on top of issues that may arise.

Step 4: How to prepare for the future?

• During the downtime make sure employees are receiving training to help them in your business.
• Is your business due for any OSHA trainings and is your staff capable of performing under an emergency?
• Evaluate potential best practices that may create a more efficient way of working and that might save money for the business.
• Become a community player:
  • Target nonprofits and community outreach organizations in your local area
  • Encourage volunteering by your workforce
  • Let others know what you have done.