Happy Christmas – but the war’s not over

Yes, I know the title of this article might feel a bit like someone pouring cold water over festivities that many of us feel we’ve earned after the year we’ve had.

We all deserve to spend the next few weeks taking a break from the relentless pace of 2020, which seems to have gone by at breakneck speed despite us having spent four months of it cooped up at home.

Partly the year might feel as though it’s flown past because times of crisis always do.

On a personal level many of us have been dealing with the health challenges that Covid and subsequent restrictions brough with them. In some tragic cases that has resulted in the loss of friends or loved ones, in others we have had to sit by knowing someone else has been suffering.

In business, the challenges have also come hard and fast.

As of November 15 – the most recent Government statistics available – some 1.2m jobs had been furloughed as part of the Job Retention Scheme. By September (again, the most recent data available from the Office of National Statistics) more than 315,000 jobs had been made redundant.

Through all of that businesses have been fighting to pivot their offer to keep turnover coming and to maintain revenue streams.

That has been harder in some sectors, of course – hospitality and entertainment being the obvious economic casualties of Covid-19 – but the impact of coronavirus has required all businesses to think and behave more creatively than they might otherwise have done.

Yes, I think we’ve all earned the right to take a foot off the gas for a week or two and simply recharge and reset for a new year that, with Brexit happening with or without a deal, will present a whole lot of new and unique challenges for UK businesses.

But this is also the time when smart business leaders will be looking ahead to 2021 and trying to work out how best to position their organisations to be as lean and fighting fit as they can possibly be.

That’s a process that doesn’t necessarily require you to be in the office all day every day, but it does require thought.

Inevitably, a lot of the thinking that has been happening over the past nine months will have been with the longer term in mind, but Christmas and the enforced restrictions we continue to live under, present as window where the white noise is reduced and the pedal-to-the-metal, head-down relentlessness of 2020 stops, even if only for a moment.

Here are my 4 suggested priorities for how you can use the time between now and the start of January to stress-test your planning without work dominating the down time you need to recharge your batteries.

1. Set conservative goals

While there are exceptions that prove every rule, the simple fact is that most economic projections for 2021 are forecasting modest growth.

Base your thinking and planning around how to maximise the opportunities that already exist or that you can predict, and how you make your business agile and flexible enough to react to unforeseen opportunities.

2. Plan your internal communication strategy

2021 is going to present real challenges. In addition to the not insignificant matter of trying to recover the ground lost during the last nine months, there’s also the small issue of Brexit which will present its own set of obstacles, particularly for businesses that have had dealings with European trade partners.

Only the most ostrich-like of business leaders will have failed to consider how they will trade from January 1. But there will be many who haven’t considered how they communicate with their own teams on the challenges ahead and the strategies that are in place to meet them.

Clear, transparent and honest communication is the key to maintaining a good level of morale and keeping your teams engaged.

3. Hope for the best, plan for the worst

Everyone is understandably excited about the Covid vaccine and the hope it brings for a more normal existence for all of us during 2021.

But if you haven’t already got the inherent message in this blog, the next year is unlikely to be plain sailing.

Give some thought to your internal structure and processes, particularly those that relate to HR, employment law and HMRC rules.

Do you have the skills within your business to manage adverse conditions that impact on your people? Is your staffing structure fit for purpose in terms of meeting the challenges ahead?

4. Where are your skills gaps?

If you have identified a gap in the skills you think your business needs to deliver your core objectives for next year, what is your strategy for filling them?

Spending a little bit of time thinking about how the look and feel of your organisation might need to change over the coming months will leave you better prepared to draw up a plan of action when we’re all back at our virtual (or perhaps physical) desks in January.

Most of all, though, take some much-needed time to draw breath and to breathe. Don’t feel guilty about taking time away from the job of running a business or part of a business – but equally, don’t let a golden opportunity to indulge yourself with some clear-headed thought!

If you need advice on how to manage the HR element of your business at the end of the Job retention Scheme, why not get in touch and see how Constantia Consulting can help you to make the right strategic decisions for your business.

Wishing you good health and peace over the holidays.