What did companies learn from covid-19?

Covid-19 is the hot topic in 2020. I’ve been reading about the impacts on the economy and on the companies. As we know, there are a lot of bad things about covid-19 — deaths, unemployment, economy collapse, people lonely, depression, etc.

But we need to see the good part of this pandemic. I know it’s hard to see a good side, however there are good lessons we’re learning. Today we’ll discuss a bit about the lessons companies learned from covid-19.

Innovation with digital products

Many times we think that only certain sectors of the economy can work with digital products, but during this pandemic it’s proving wrong. Many small, medium businesses, and even autonomous professionals are innovating with digital services/products.

As an example, I see some personal trainers and gyms with online classes through YouTube and Instagram.

Digital products are becoming more popular, specially during hard times like this pandemic. Bakeries, dressmakers, car dealers and other businesses had to learn how to sell on the internet, how to post their products. I’ve seen barbershops, that need to have contact with people to cut their hair and shave bears for example, made promotions with discounts to make the service whenever the situation is better, but people should pay before, so then they can afford their rents and have some money during this time.

There are many other examples, but the important thing is that people learned and are giving their best to survive, since autonomous professionals until big businesses.

Home office

The home office is becoming very popular. Last week I wrote a post about the secrets of the home office, this post describes some tips for professionals about home office.

Many companies, even those who didn’t like the idea of having their employees working from home, had to make some adaptations not to stop their activities. For sure these companies, and the ones that already did home office at some point, had problems, but they learned how good it can be for the business and for the employees, and probably will adopt this practice, even in small proportions after the pandemic.

Importance to develop teams’ maturity

Many companies are noticing how important it is to invest on their teams.

Develop people’s soft and “hard” skills is so important that it’s getting clear now that mature teams are producing good results in home office mode, and those teams that are still developing these skills are having some trouble, but they are learning. Whenever these teams go back to normality, a lot of things will be improved, like productivity, communication, professional development, and they’ll see value of being together with co-workers.

I’m sure from now on, the companies will have a closer look at teams development. And everyone wins by these actions, the company will have better results and the professionals will evolve.

Asynchronous communication

Asynchronous communication isn’t something new. It wasn’t invented during the pandemic and it’s also not something exclusive for home office.

Companies have been adopting communication tools since a long time ago. These tools will help teams to have chat history, group chats, video calls, and will give the teams the ability to communicate asynchronously.

Communicating asynchronously is important on the office and on home office mode. Many times people need time to think, plan, concentrate, produce, sketch solutions, etc. Some of these tasks needs concentration and time, it’s not a good thing to get interrupted all the time when you can wait 10 minutes for a reply. That’s why asynchronous communication is a powerful tool — I’ll ask something to a team or to a co-worker, and they’ll answer as soon as they’re free, or as soon as they’re done with some important task. Of course, unless it’s something urgent, it’s a good idea.

As home office is the work mode of many companies at the moment, the asynchronous communication is, not by choice, taking place on these companies. And the professionals are having to deal with it and are seeing how good it can be for productivity and communication.

Flexible shifts

Some sectors of the economy allow flexibility of the shifts. It gives the employees the power to occupy their time the best way they need. Sometimes you need to get the kids at the school, go to the supermarket, go to a doctor appointment, get a package, and working 8 hours in a row doesn’t allow that.

With the home office people is noticing how important is this flexibility to get these, non professional, tasks done. Also, giving some breaks during the day will allow the person to think better. Resting the mind and having these breaks are good for productivity as stated here.

Notice that during this post the word “learn” is written many times. Companies are learning how to deal with different situations and are developing new and better ways of working to improve the use of time, have better productivity and happy people working on these organizations.

That was all for this post. If you have any questions or want to discuss more, you can reach out to me on the comments section. I hope I helped a bit, thank you!