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Business Pandemic Plan
With the recent outbreak of the coronavirus (covid-19) all over the world, so many businesses in the United States are struggling to review or develop their business continuity plan. It is always good to have a plan in place even before a pandemic hit. After all, this is not the first pandemic to hit the global economy. If you can remember well, there was an outbreak of avian flu in 2008 and SARS in 2003. The other pandemic that has been receiving a high level of attention in the United States is the recent Ebola crisis. Even though a lot of worries have been revolving around what you should do after contracting the disease, you should use more time looking at what your business should do in case such a disease comes up again. It is very dangerous when a disease goes to the extent of hitting the pandemic levels.
This reminds everyone on the importance of having a business pandemic plan to help minimize losses and continue with operations in case a global pandemic comes your way. As a business owner, you need to plan your response to pandemics in advance. Make sure you set up clear policies for monitoring such a situation. You should also budget for contingencies and state the commitments that your business will make to its employees. In case you are not sure of what to do, NXT LVL ROI Business Consulting Services will help you out. We have a team of experts who are well trained and highly experienced in developing a business pandemic plan.
There is so much that we can help you to put in place to make sure that the operations of your business don’t stop. You will end up becoming the winner amidst the pandemic that could be hitting the entire region or even the whole world.
During such times of elevate concerns, most organizations focus on the technological challenges that they are facing as a result of the pandemic. One thing most of them forget is that human capital considerations can have a significant effect on their ability to do business. You need to take a wholistic approach when planning for a pandemic. One thing you need to ask yourself is whether you have the right technology in place to make your staff work from home without affective their levels of productivity. With pandemic planning, the business will be able to support its critical operations when part of or even most of its workers are not available.
Don’t wait until a pandemic comes in before you begin to prepare a plan to handle the same. You may discover that it is too late and time is not on your side. As the old saying goes, it is good to prepare hay when the sun still shines. We have a team that is highly experienced when it comes to developing a business pandemic plan. Our team will look at all the available possibilities and help you to draw the best plan. However, even if you have already been hard hit by the pandemic, we will help you draw the best way of forward. There are so many businesses that go under during such pandemics. However, our goal is to make sure that you emerge victoriously.
Our consultants will make sure that you have an effective pandemic plan in place. It is a matter of making sure that you are able to take the most appropriate action. There are so many questions that we ask ourselves when preparing such a plan. It is the answers to these questions that make us come up with the best strategy moving forward. These include;
You need to ask yourself whether consumers will still want or need your products and services during the pandemic period. It is one of the questions that most people fail to focus on when planning for a pandemic. For instance, the recent volatility in the stock market displays vulnerabilities in so many sectors. One of the sectors that records the highest level of negative impacts is the travel industry. On the other hand, the online entertainment companies will normally record a positive impact during the pandemic. Remember, people are working from home and there are restricted movements. Therefore, the starting point is to make sure that you have a clear understanding of your business. Get to know your customers and their potential to change demand especially during a pandemic. Without this knowledge, you will not be able to move even one step forward with the pandemic planning. The precision of the answers that you give to this question will determine the effectiveness of the program. Besides, assess whether the changes in demand will be possibly permanent or temporary. These considerations are critical especially when you want to emerge out of the situations victoriously. Identify possible mitigation plans to sustain your business during the pandemic and recovery plans afterwards.
If you produce goods, it is time to ask yourself where you source the components from. If you ship raw materials from a company that is hard hit by the virus, you can expect possible delays in the shipping process. An excellent example are the companies that source from China during the covid-19 pandemic. Most of them affect the pharmaceutical and electronic manufacturers and beyond. Therefore, you need a business pandemic plan that can give you the second-best alternatives if your main supplier is bit by the pandemic.
A strategy that does not give you a fall back when it comes to suppliers is a useless one. It is one of the things that we pay close attention to when helping you to come up with the most actionable plan. In case you are producing services, confirm where the location of most of your employees. Ask yourself whether they can work from home especially if the pandemic results into an economic lockdown. There are so many restrictions including travel that take place especially in counties that are hard hit by the pandemic. Check whether such limitations will limit your business travel and how it will impact your business. These are some of the things that we will help you to plan as you prepare a business pandemic plan.
A pandemic outbreak can be widespread and affect more than one business. Therefore, the third-party vendors that you rely upon for the supply of goods and services can be hard hit. We will help you to analyze your scenario and help you come up with the best strategy. The consultants will help you to incorporate backup plans for your key vendors and suppliers.
It goes without saying that any pandemic will have a significant effect on your customers. Our consultants will help you to check whether there are in downstream or upstream impacts on your customers. Your customers may also experience severe staff shortages or supply chain issues. Think whether the pandemic can have any effects beyond your revenues. There are so many possible scenarios depending on the type of your business. As a team of consultants, we will consider all of them and leave nothing to chances.
Did you know that the pandemic scenarios can enhance the relationship that you have with your customers? If you are prepared and your competitors are not, you may be the only one who is left in production. However, it does not mean that you gain an edge through opportunistic exploitation. If you do so, no customer will trust you after the pandemic and you stand to lose the biggest in the long run. You need to command a higher customer base through a collaborative and compassionate assistance. Check whether there are any ways to assist your clients during the pandemic. When you help out during such hard times, it will generate the type of good will that you can never buy. We know how to spot such opportunities and help you to get maximum benefits from them.
It goes without saying that any pandemic, regardless of the intensity, will have an effect on your employees. Therefore, you need to have the best strategy in place to overcome the limitations that such a pandemic may have on your workers. Ask yourself whether the system allows your employees to work from home. It can be quite hard to support such a system especially when dealing with the employees in the manufacturing industry who need to access specialized machines to produce various products. However, for the service sector, all you need is to give the employees the system and they will be working without any problem.
Besides, a certain proportion of you employees could be sick and you need to think about how they will operate. There is no way a sick employee will come to work because he won’t be productive. Besides, it can increase the risk of transmitting the disease especially if it is airborne. Can your firm still operate withy a lower number of staff. Do you have any plans to assist a quarantined member of staff? Some of these things may appear to be meaningless until a pandemic knock at your door.
Just like your customers, you need to look for the best ways of assisting your employees during these hard times. These are people who have been working hard to take your organization to the next level. It is your time to show them that you can stand with them during the hard times. The employees can be healthy but their children could be forced to stay at home for several weeks. Besides, for those employees who live alone, are there ways for the company to remain in touch with all of them. We will go through your HR policies to know whether it allows you to make any temporary or permanent revisions to address any pandemic-related issues. These are critical considerations when planning for a pandemic. It is good to understand that the most valuable resource that you have in your organization are the employees. Therefore, you have to do all that you can to protect them. You have to assist your employees in case they are affected in one way or another.
Like any other crisis, you need a team to prepare and implement the business pandemic plan. You cannot just call upon a few people, when the situation is out of hand and endow them with this responsibility. We have organizations who overlook this critical aspect of pandemic planning. Remember you need someone to authorize the associated large expenditures, make strategic decisions that are significantly tactical, and declare a pandemic action plan until everything returns to normal. This decision is critical and needs a well-trained and highly experienced individual. We will give you the characteristics that such individuals should have so that you can choose the best. Remember, you know your team better and we cannot impose anyone on you. All we will do is to guide you through the selection process.
However, some key leaders may be absent because they are ill or can’t be physically unavailable. You should spell out a contingency plan in advance on how to delegate the authority of the organization. It is good to rest this using various scenarios to make sure that the pandemic will not impact key operations of some of the top leaders are absent from duty.
One of the key elements when preparing for a pandemic is educating your employees about the facts. The organization should also be prepared to enforce the right strategies to help in avoiding the spread of the disease. You should encourage the sick employees to remain at home because it is one of the best ways to prevent the spreading of any pandemic. Therefore, you should initiate the right strategies during a potential pandemic outbreak. Make sure you outline all these strategies when preparing to handle any pandemic that may come your way. Educate the employees in advance so that they will not be hearing of it for the first time when the pandemic has already hit hard. We are keen to all these details when helping you to develop the best business pandemic plan. We also assign responsibility so that you will know who will be handling what within the organization.
Cross training is the other critical element during business pandemic planning. It entails making sure that your business functions can go on uninterrupted in the absence of the essential personnel. It is the only way that you will be sure of business continuity. The cross-training process will protect against the single failure points. This is one of the things that makes most organizations to go under during a pandemic. You need a knowledgeable person to perform the task if one of the key employees is not available. We will help you to include the aspect of cross training in your business plan. If there is the need, the team at NXT LVL ROI Business Consulting Services will take your employees through the training program. Don’t trust any consultancy firm that does not include cross training as part of the business pandemic plan. We know our work as business consultants and will not leave out anything that is critical to the success of your business.
One of the options that you have as a business is to plan for your employees to work at home. However, as we said, there are some tasks that you cannot work from home. For instance, a machine operator should be physically present in the office to be able to implement his tasks properly. However, if the pandemic calls for social distancing, you can allow those employees who can work from home to do so.
For those who have to come to work, it is advisable to limit on the numbers. It is wise to test all these options to see whether they are viable. If employees need an intranet to work, can you be able to connect them? Employees should have the right tools to allow them to work from home successfully. Besides, you should have enough bandwidth to support the number of people who will be working remotely. All these are strategies that we will help you to put in place.
If workers can’t go onsite for an extended period, your organization should have an effective plan to use remote users to sustain the ongoing communications. You have to make sure that you can still exchange critical information so that your workers can be abreast on any changes or developments as the situation continues to progress. We will make sure that your business incorporates these focus areas into the business pandemic plan. It is the best way to increase your preparedness and response to the pandemic.
The best business pandemic plan will have a communication program that will allow information and messages to continue to disseminate. Remember there is a possibility that not everyone will be accessing the office at such a time. It should encompass the ability of the management team to communicate the decisions that will help the staff to keep running the business. Information should continue to flow smoothly even if things are not running normally. You should keep all the stakeholders and investors informed to reduce the panic of investors. As we help you to develop a business pandemic plan, we will make sure that the communication strategy is part of it.
The top management of your business has to set up the guiding principles that will be used in case of a pandemic. It can include the level of care that your company can provide to the employees. Will your company give medical care to the workers who are affected by the pandemic? You have to stipulate the programs that the company should put in place to sustain the pandemic.
You should also propose a budget and the people who will be responsible for implementing the pandemic programs.
When preparing a business pandemic plan, you have to put several flexible working systems in place. You need to have policies on the flexible working schedules, absenteeism, and working from home. Some management and staff members may be required to take over other positions in the company or work hand in hand with the other companies to maintain critical services.
In case of a pandemic, there can be a shortage in supplies and raw materials. The pandemic plan should account for how you will deal with these shortages. It should stage the amount of raw materials you will need to stockpile so that your business can continue running at the acceptable levels. The pandemic plan should detail how the business operations will continue with high shortages in supplies and absenteeism. You can scale down the production by focusing on the essential services.
As you plan for a Business Pandemic Plan, you should include ways of safeguarding the workplace from the transmission of diseases. These may include things like disinfecting the workplace to kill the bacteria. We will help you to set the administrative and engineering controls to use in the event of a pandemic. Some of the engineering controls include the erection of physical barriers between customers and the staff or even installing sneeze guards. For the administrative controls, you can develop policies that allow the staff to work from home or minimize face to face contact.
NXT LVL ROI Business Consulting Services is the best brand when it comes to business pandemic planning. It is one of the areas that most business persons overlook because no one anticipates a pandemic. In business, you should always hope for the best but prepare for the worst. A pandemic will completely destroy your brand in the absence of proper planning. That is why we can confidently state that failing to plan is planning to fail. Our consultants will help you to prepare adequately in case of a global pandemic.
At NXT LVL ROI Business Consulting Services, Our Expertise Resides Within These 3 Core Foundational Services:
Even though the above 3 core services is what our agency & consulting firm is about, we offer several other ancillary services below. Whatever your business or professional needs our, we’re your one stop shop consulting firm to discover & deploy proven solutions to you and your business.
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At NXT LVL ROI Business Consulting Services, we focus on driving results to our clients. Our bottom line is to see your bottom line grow significantly. Even though our three core service offerings are business consulting, digital marketing, & lead generation, we also offer a wide variety of ancillary services. That’s completely based on your business & professional needs, and completing a strategy session with you to find the best solutions. If you’re seeking something more specific that may not be listed in the services section below, simply get in contact with us by either call us at (866) 389-1138 or by submitting a form on our contact page. Below are our list of additional services:
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