Fatihah Ramzi, DigitalCFO Asia | 6 July 2022
What does it take to succeed in a world that is changing? In the post-COVID world, businesses must enforce critical changes.
Businesses had to mobilize, stabilize, and find a method to return to work during the COVID-19 pandemic without having to be in the workplace. Businesses must now look for options that will help them become stronger in the post-COVID-19 recovery, including developing resilience to deal with upcoming shocks.
But the more urgent concern is: What does it take to succeed in a world that is changing? To confront the most pressing pressures confronting business executives in the post-COVID era, businesses will need to adopt a new perspective and narrow their emphasis. Companies will need to study the most important business issues and explain how leaders may redesign and restructure their businesses to thrive and be a part of the solution, integrating the latest ideas and cutting-edge research from across the world. In the environment of the post-COVID-19 world, the problems include digital disruption, diversity and inclusion, and the workforce.
Building Strategic Resilience
Businesses all throughout the world had to respond quickly and forcefully to the pandemic’s difficulties. Businesses need to look for and grab the opportunities presented by the recovery as they enter the next phase. This entails carrying out a “after-action review” to gather information and perspectives on the pandemic’s lessons learned, and then prioritizing steps to increase corporate value today and create strategic resilience for the future. Businesses who take these actions now will be in a good position to take advantage of the opportunities emerging in the post-COVID-19 recovery and to keep dominating their markets as more predictability and stability return.
Fast-moving and unexpected effects from COVID-19 left many already-established crisis plans and teams unprepared. But businesses have a chance to benefit from the COVID-19 disruption by taking the correct lessons from the epidemic and bolstering their resilience for the next disaster.
PWC’s Global Crisis Survey 2021 identified three key lessons that businesses can adopt for long-term resilience:
- Establish a crisis response team, create a crisis response plan that is in line with your strategy, goals, and purpose, and create an integrated resilience program and be ready for the next inevitable disruption.
- Break down barriers between resilience teams and skills, and combine them to plan the strategies, equipment, and resources required for a successful crisis response.
- Establishing high-level governance for resilience, reviewing and revising your crisis management plan, and promoting a culture of resilience are all ways to strengthen organizational resilience.
Redefining How People Work In The Post-COVID World
The pandemic has permanently altered the workforce. However, what experiences and working models do people want in the future? And how can businesses integrate these goals into their mission and strategy? The Great Resignation is upon us, as was previously forecasted in the early months of the year, and many businesses will see high employee turnover rates if they continue to operate on pre-pandemic employee standards. People’s preferences for how they want to work have been changing since since the pandemic. In the post-pandemic era, business executives will need to prepare for permanently altered employee relationships with and expectations of work.
HR leaders must assess how these trends will affect their organizations both now and in the future, as well as how much they will alter their strategic objectives and goals. Here are the top four areas on which firms need to concentrate:
- Workers want to reskill, especially in digital. This is because the pandemic forced many companies to accelerate at a pace which employees found hard to keep up with. Many employees become overwhelmed with the digital skills that they need to pick up and will eventually become disheartened to continue working with their current company as they are not provided with the right help.
- Remote work is in demand. People who can work remotely prefer a flexible mix of in-person and remote working. This is due to the fact that the pandemic made it very clear to employees that they do not have to be present in the office to be productive.
- There’s a strong desire for greater inclusivity especially for women. Companies that intend to remain competitive will need to take a stance on anti-discrimination policies as well as promoting women in leadership positions. Not only is there a growing need for gender inclusivity but age and ethnicity are also highly looked upon.
- Many people are concerned about job security. Employees are worried that automation is putting their jobs at risk which is why business leaders need to find a way to assure their employees as well as to get their employees onboard. It is time to educate the workforce about how automation helps to alleviate their job scope and give them more time to focus on more critical tasks.
Expanding The Focus From Logistics To Customer Insight
Global supply chains in both B2C and B2B industries have been affected by the COVID-19 outages in a cascading manner. The foundation of future supply chain competitiveness is expanding beyond the physical supply chain to include a more comprehensive understanding of customer experiences and the use of them to develop an informed strategy as stability and predictability return.
When it comes to B2B value chain, there are 3 key areas of focus:
- Deepen understanding of clients’ wants and figure out how to provide them with outstanding experiences without sacrificing cost or timeliness.
- The value chain of your customers should be mapped, and an ecosystem should be developed to enable customer interactions.
- Adopt a human-centric perspective on digital, using the appropriate digital tools as necessary to fulfill the most significant customer commitments.
In the past, businesses have used a variety of justifications to steer clear of challenging and expensive reforms. But many increasingly understand that in order to be successful or even survive in a rapidly changing market, bold actions and daring are needed. Organizations must put in the time and effort necessary to create a clear vision for their future, plan for that change, and carry it out.
Businesses must avoid the trap of engaging in the newest, best technologies that do not genuinely meet their demands because technology alone is not a magic cure-all for success. To review and take action on the insights that technology and data can provide, new teams and processes must be created. Additionally, teams require more freedom to find new opportunities and act swiftly. A key lesson sometimes overlooked during transitions can doom even the most promising initiatives: good data and guidelines can assist in constructing safety barriers and provide beneficial tools to strengthen teams.
