Back to Normal: Business After COVID-19
Credit: @hgullixson
While businesses are preparing to reopen their doors after over a year in lockdown, it’s practical to feel optimistic, however cautious, about how to do so successfully without having concerns arise in your employees or customers. Although vaccines are being administered at a seemingly rapid and successful rate, it’s obvious that things still won’t return to normal immediately. In the meantime, we suggest using this period to develop and devise a best practices plan for reopening, from hours to precautions, on top of staying up to date with your local government and CDC recommendations.
Getting Back to Normal (Or Close) :
Stay Clean
Whether your business is run from the comforts of your home, an owned building or leased office space, it is important to keep everything clean. From sanitizing workspaces to decontaminating the area (regardless of a reported COVID case), it is important, more now than ever to continue to keep those areas pristine and free of any possible contaminants, especially if you plan on having other employees return to the site of business. If you’re working alone in your venture, it’s still dire to make sure the products you’re assembling are safe to be received by customers as well.
Employee Protection
If you’ve decided that you’d like your employees to return to the office or shop, while the first step is important, your employees will also have to be kept safe from you as well as other coworkers. For this reason, we suggest that you check your ventilation systems and are following government guidelines relating to social distancing and/or face mask coverings. Additional precautions to consider are the use of physical barriers, safe guards or contactless service options.
Slow Reopen
Although we’re all eager to open our doors again and return to normal, to pull this off right it is also important to reopen slowly. For starters, it’s a good idea to bring individual employees in sparingly, especially if you are requiring COVID tests or additional precautions besides mandatory protective measures just to ensure you’re abiding by guidelines and can operate within an approved capacity, and at a successful rate. This also goes for the amount of customers you decide to bring or allow back into your business. While there are government-issued guidelines, depending on business return, you might consider a change in your hours or occupancy that best suits all parties involved.
Educate
Just as we were all learning how to handle the coronavirus pandemic, with changes and new precautions announced what felt like on a daily basis, the same can be said for what things will take to move from lockdown to a normal schedule, too. It is for this reason that it’s very important to keep yourself, your employees and your customers educated so that they can continue to be involved in best practices within the business and throughout the community.
Refinancing
Whether you’ve continued to work at a regular capacity throughout the pandemic or it’s caused you to cut back, in returning to a more normal schedule, it’s never a bad idea to look over your finances and cut where appropriate in order to restart your business, essentially. This could involve changing vendors, your business plan layout, or other aspects of your business.
Marketing
With everyone working from home and transitioning to a lockdown lifestyle, there is no doubt that people were on their computers most of the time. With the possibility of moving back to a physical location or being involved with public events where your business could be represented, you’ll also want to examine how your business is working to advertise and if that plan will work for you moving forward.
Positivity and Patience
Although this whole year has felt like a bit of a bust, if you are able to reopen or return to your place of business, you’ll have to understand that not all the changes are over. Whole things might look a little different when this is all over, it is important to stay positive and work through all the obstacles with patience and perseverance.
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