Business Not-So Usual Following COVID-19

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world have rushed to support businesses of all sizes. But even with this support, many small business operators have found that they’ve ground to a halt, and may struggle to return to normality when the lockdown is lifted. 

 

A Hume, a clothing business based in the Scottish Borders, has produced a short but very useful guide which outlines some great tips for small businesses looking to keep things moving during this time. The guide is particularly useful for smaller businesses based in rural areas, who may find themselves with less immediate support. If you want to read the full guide you can find it here, but one of the best parts of the guide is where the business break down how they pivoted to remote working:

We had to set up our remote access fairly, quickly, and were reacting to the scenario rather than having time to plan for it. Our first step was to identify the required tasks to be completed and then allocate these to the correct staff member. Initially, we did not have much in the way of structure but have since implemented timesheets, this allows us to keep track of what tasks are being worked on, what is completed and what is proving trickier than expected.

 

We rely heavily on the team being honest with how long tasks are taking, how software is running, and drawing on their experience of the in-office productive level as a guide. Identifying issues has allowed us to address them and fix them so that our team can work as efficiently as possible and get the most out of their time. We have our IT dept on hand to help run checks where things are running slowly but other tricks include the usual “restart”. Making sure that non-relevant programs/apps are closed and clearing out your browser history and cache if the browser is running slow also helps.

We are still adjusting every day to the new set up and coming across better ways in which we can work together but remotely. We recommend setting up a designated work area, where you can concentrate and relate only to work, this is important so that you can switch off when not working and have as much of a work/life balance as possible. Keeping up communication is important so that no one feels isolated and that we can still come together collaboratively to work on ideas and projects and keep our enthusiasm up.

 

This section of the guide is useful for businesses of any size to read, but the whole guide is useful. So take a look at the guide and let us know what you think! 

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