How are you, your team and business adjusting to this pandemic? Are you stagnant and hoping to get by, struggling with revenue or spinning your wheels looking for every escape?
Don’t get trapped in ‘being busy’ by filling your time. Engage with being proactive to build your business, your team and your community.
If your line of business has slowed pace due to the COVID outbreak, let’s engage with some actions our industry is being creative with for embracing change, planning and making the most of this time.
In-House Cleaning
Review your business plan with the theme of updating, removing, refreshing and adjusting. With the pandemic, now is the time to be active, engage and start planting new roots on how your business can pivot to improve your operations. Ask your team to actively produce (2) areas they think can be improved and then put action to your final selection. Formalize a structured plan that addresses the risks, path, stakeholders, cost, effort and reward. Once your team has agreed, assign your lead team to form the schedule and action plan to moving forward.
Market
Consider your services or product to see if there is another market you can thrive in. Several groups have taken their raw materials to promote new products that are helping reduce the spread of Covid-19. Get creative and do your research to see how you can test your solution. If your services or product isn’t flexible and would cause risk by taking the chance – stick to what works. Instead, look at new areas of marketing or strategies to selling your brand.
Work Remote
Now that a substantial portion of our nation has tried working from home, start considering what your business operations could look like by making this adding flexibility to office time. How would this affect your business infrastructure needs? Could this affect your company’s benefit package? Can your team consider a smaller footprint office allowing more offices globally which might drive more company awareness? Filter every part of your business, relations and tools to see how this can make a positive impact on your employees and your clients. Form your plan and then carry out the actions by formalizing it in the company – don’t be passive with good intentions, but intentional to creating change!
Real Estate
Our past clients are starting to review their real estate needs and terms. Is there an opportunity to consolidate spaces? An opportunity to sub-lease a space or use as a storage facility? Consider how reorganizing your office might free up some space to start using differently. Consider renegotiating lease term lengths to position your company for new opportunities for the near future. Like our industry, this might start a new standard for how your operations function and execute business.
Financials
Whether you’ve had to start pinching pennies on a personal budget or a company capital budget due to the Covid impacts, there’s always ways to be more cost effective with your spending. Our partners have started in-house reviews and are finding some great ways to reduce unnecessary spending and capitalize on their growth opportunities. (For this theme, we’ve chosen to focus on excess spending and not being cheap):
- Real Estate: This theme has come in for the #1 largest return to taking action in businesses’ still progressing their capital plans into a Covid environment. The bottom line here is that clients are seeing the value of partnering with quality architecture firms that offer intentional planning and avoid excess space in the designs. Planning your space requirements prior to leasing or building a space is crucial and should be spent wisely.
- Infrastructure: Look at investing in your employees’ home office infrastructure. With the work from home concept, many of our clients are now giving their employees a budget for making their infrastructure needs more resilient and more office-like. Consider a second monitor, an upgraded home office chair or an internet booster. These decisions have helped our industry to consider their work-office infrastructure needs and overall footprint requirements.
- The Work Office vs. Home Office: Although much of the industry thought the city may have turned into a ghost town, our work offices still play a vital role in your companies’ exposure and ability to personally connect with other people. Your company exposure may be different but having a presence in the work office is both good to your clients’ needs and your company’s internal growth. The value of keeping your work office will lead to new business opportunities as well. The advantage of offering the flexible work-home office came in high as it gives employees the personal advantage to being flexible with their work week and comes in as a nice company perk; which helps with employee retention.
Spinning Wheels
Our concluding remarks is there are a great number of options to be proactive with for bettering our circumstances, but don’t get lost in spinning your wheels. Re-balance your motives. Examine the impacts to the areas your team want to take action on but most importantly don’t spin your wheels with actions that won’t add value to your company, your employees or your clients.
Office Changes
If your office is considering to downsize, relocate or upgrade your space as a solution to being proactive in the pandemic – Hosler Project Management can guide your team through the process. Let’s save time, save resources and save a headache to your team by engaging with our firm to compliment your team’s design & construction plans.