Whanau, this is not a drill.
Most businesses are experiencing significant disruption to their business-as-usual operations and will face business underperformance throughout the duration of the COVID-19 crisis.
Acting quickly and wisely by putting together your business continuity plan is the key to successfully navigating your businesses through these uncertain times.
Even if you can’t continue operating during this crisis, it’s important to put a plan in place to minimise loss of wealth, protect your assets, deal with employment issues and ensure that tax and business wind up issues are correctly handled.
Not only will it decrease your stress levels and increase your chances of surviving this crisis but it will also put you in a much stronger position to better manage any future disruptions to your business.
Right now we are bombarded with so much information, it’s so overwhelming – where do we even start? To simplify the steps towards preparing a business continuity plan, we’ve identified some key areas that you need to consider while creating your plan.
Your mindset
We are not immune to the spread of worry, fear and instability. With the constant barrage of bad news it’s easy to get stuck in the pattern of negative thinking driven by fear and helplessness. It’s important to build our mental resilience through mindfulness by calming the mind, being healthy, reflecting and connecting with others through compassion.
Supporting your team
In times of crisis no job is more important than taking care of your team. Be understanding of your team’s circumstances and distractions and find ways to engage and motivate them. Clearly and thoroughly communicate important new goals and information.
Supporting and retaining your customers
Reach out to your clients. To strengthen relationships keep the focus on them and explore how you can truly help them by proposing payment schedules to ease their liquidity crunch.
Work with your suppliers
Open and honest communication is vital to supporting your suppliers during this crisis. Identify which suppliers are most at risk and work with them to modify terms of contract to offer them relief and come to an agreement on temporary payment proposals. This will ensure that they will be able to cope during the crisis and resume normal service delivery when the pandemic is over.
Managing cashflow
Managing cashflow Is essential for a business at all times but becomes even more important during times of crises. Bear in mind that your customers and suppliers will also be concerned about their cashflow. Preserving and bringing forward cashflow, and creating a war chest of cash reserves is important right now.
These are scary times for everyone, but it’s a time for planning, not panicking. We can all make a plan to minimise the impact as much as possible. Things will change, that’s a given. But with this change comes opportunities.
To help you create your business continuity plan and reduce stress and gain control over your business affairs, WE have delivered a comprehensive webinar on how to create your business continuity plan.
As part of our commitment to making business easy – the process is simple and WE also have a template and guide that you can access too.
If you would like to have access to the template and guide, please send us a message and we'll send one out to you
