Business Security: Looking After Our Business and Employees
Business disruption is something that we don’t want to prepare for, but it is essential.
Due to the pandemic, small business owners have found that a significant amount of shocks have either left their businesses struggling or have made them more resilient in the face of upheaval
. This is why you need to prepare your business and your employees for this difficult period.
You may very well have done a lot of preparation, but here are some important things for you to consider.
Securing the Business Location
Because employees are now scattered and are working from home, you are accountable for the business location.
You may be at the point where you are wondering if it is worth your while having the location up and running.
But it’s important to remember that when the pandemic is over, there are people who will be fed up with working from home.
It would help if you also considered ensuring the location’s security because of the potential for vandalism and break-ins.
The great thing is that you can easily improve your business security using sites like Watchmenkc.com to add security cameras and additional functions.
Preparing Business Security: Continuity Plans
If you haven’t experienced a significant amount of disruption to your supply chain or employees calling in sick, now is the time to focus on how your business will continue.
Business continuity plans are available for any entrepreneur to focus upon to ensure that the business can stay afloat. But this is where you’ve got to balance your head and your heart.
There may be individuals who are integral to their operations.
Still, when you balance this in terms of your business’s financial components, you may discover that there will be some corners that need cutting, especially in the short-term.
But you also have to remember that when you have to cut corners, there will be people who decide to jump ship.
A business continuity plan is focused on the business, but employees need support during this time. And it is your obligation in a moral sense to provide additional support, even if you cannot physically pay them.
Business Security.: Incorporate an Emergency Communications Plan
With everything being up in the air, you’ve got to ensure that you have a very detailed list of protocols with your employees your suppliers, and customers.
There is advice on creating an emergency communications plan on Allthingsadmin.com to get you started. But some of the most important aspects include the following:
- Identifying key contacts;
- Identifying backup contacts;
- Figure out the chain of communications, including the customers and the suppliers;
- Incorporating processes to communicate and track the business and employer status.
The last point is crucial because your employees demand consistent communication.
It’s not always easy when you are struggling to keep everything going.
This is why an emergency communications plan is something that you can follow rather than causing yourself great anxiety during a stressful time.
It’s important to incorporate protocols such as this because you are likely going through the wringer yourself.
Having something to follow will make life significantly easier.
Focus on Reducing Your Anxiety
It’s a difficult time for employees, but you need to remember that your emotions are important.
It’s something that is, again, about balancing the matters of the head and the heart.
When we struggle to communicate our needs to our employees because we’re going through a difficult time at home or our business is threatening to go under every turn, we have to focus on maintaining a shred of sanity.
We live in unprecedented times, but this is why we can seek refuge in sage advice for people who have been through difficult times before.
If you haven’t already got a mentor, now would be the time to turn to someone who has been through the difficulties many moons ago.
Those who experienced significant losses due to the 2008 recession may be able to give you some advice.
You may feel ready to speak to individuals suffering from this pandemic, but it’s important to exercise some tact.
It would help if you thought about reducing your anxiety with some simple methods:
- Deep breathing exercises;
- Meditation;
- Focusing your efforts on the positive;
- Learning how to develop your own resilience.
It’s these components that can help us to reduce our anxiety. Running a business is stressful, and as this pandemic is arguably making us wonder if our business can survive, we need to ensure that our health doesn’t suffer.
Business Security: Share Your Response Plans With Your Employees
While there is the news of a vaccine, we can’t relax just yet.
It’s about making sure that we come up with the goods to respond to the situation accordingly and make sure that our employees understand our expectations.
We have to make sure that our employees know how to protect themselves health-wise and keep them in the loop with regard to our long-term plans.
Working from home should be the way to go for the foreseeable future, but we’ve also got to remember that our employees’ mental health can be impacted as a result.
It is vital to inform our employees of our expectations in the future.
We may feel that we should keep our cards close to our chest, especially if the business is going under, and we are concerned about losing employees, but this isn’t a very healthy approach.
Everybody is experiencing anxiety as it is. This is why focusing our efforts on cultivating a team spirit may help keep employees on board rather than jumping ship to become delivery drivers!
Ensuring our employees are healthy and happy during this difficult time is partly our responsibility.
Making sure the business stays afloat is our priority. Still, if we can put the plans in place to ensure that the business is healthy despite what is going on while also making sure that our employees and ourselves are functioning well, this is the best we can do.
