Bouncing back
Rescue, recover and rebuild with Insperity
Disasters, disease, cultural shifts— upheavals happen. How your business responds will determine its long-term future and culture. Here, in line with its commiment to deliver “HR that makes a difference,” leading business authority Insperity offers guidance to leaders looking not just to survive tough times, but to emerge from them stronger and poised for bigger success
A , we believe that one of the defining characteristics of the American entrepreneurial spirit is resiliency. Business owners, by definition, are problem solvers. In crisis situations, entrepreneurs often emerge stronger, smarter, and even more determined to succeed. They teach us about what is possible with creativity, tenacity, and grit. Insperity has been advising businesses, in good times and bad, for more than 30 years. The following is designed to present some of the lessons we’ve learned from prior down times as well as in this current crisis.
RESCUE, RECOVER, AND REBUILD
There is nothing normal about today’s business landscape. This pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t seen in more than a century, has had a major impact on businesses of all sizes. But it has been particularly devastating for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). However, this is not the first time America’s small businesses have faced monumental challenges. From hurricanes to 9/11 to the financial crisis of the late 1980s, businesses have had to deal with the painful aftermath of massive upheavals. During the past four decades, Insperity has helped clients look at a variety of economic, health-related, and natural disasters through three distinct stages: rescue, recover, and rebuild.
PHASE 1: RESCUE
A big part of this crisis’ rescue stage has been the coronavirus aid, relief, and economic security (cares) act, which provided various loans and grants to SMBs. Without that assistance, countless businesses would have gone under. However, while important, those measures were temporary. To survive, business leaders are having to find creative ways to rescue their businesses without the help of future handouts.
When your business is in the rescue phase, the goal is triage. You may feel like you’re in survival mode, looking for any opportunity to stave off the threat and keep your business going. During the pandemic, many businesses have made significant operational changes. They may have shifted much of their workforce to remote work. Some businesses have significantly expanded their online presence and e-commerce abilities or begun offering new products or services.
With each shift has come the need to adapt. For businesses with remote workers, that has meant learning how to get maximum productivity out of each employee, while maintaining a positive company culture. This requires nearly constant communication and transparency from leadership. For those making the shift to online sales or new product offerings, adapting has meant assembling the necessary infrastructure and tools to support those new ways of doing business.
During this difficult time, every decision matters. To make these decisions, you must bring your best and brightest together. Fortunately, technology has evolved, and there are myriad tools and platforms to help teams communicate and collaborate from afar. Gone are the days when weekly staff meetings were sufficient. As you’re in rescue mode, your leadership team must huddle every day, because during this time, there will be constant, important decisions to be made.
Business owners don’t have the luxury of compartmentalizing for just one thing. Of course, during the rescue portion you must focus on what you need to do today to keep your business operational and make progress toward your next phase. That is a survival instinct. If you have that rescue mindset, you can’t stay in that alone every day. Call on your colleagues, advisors, mentors, employees, and even your customers to give you feedback about what’s working and what needs to change. And know that these people are on your side. They want to see you succeed.
PHASE 2: RECOVER
Once your business has faced the immediate threat, and you have determined how the organization will continue to operate, it’s time to think about recovery. You must manage the reality of what has happened and think about the necessary steps to take to get back to where you were. There will be many questions, including:
• Where do we go from here?
• Can we take advantage of down time or a slow business period now to position ourselves to be stronger?
• How do we model our business today to get where we want to be tomorrow?
As business owners, you must keep your ultimate desired outcome in mind. Look at the changes your business has undergone, and think about how these shifts will affect your business in the future. One of the most astonishing aspects of this pandemic has been how it has helped some organizations usher in changes that may otherwise have taken years to implement or which may never have happened at all without the monumental shifts caused by COVID-19.
Think about how many workers were told that their jobs couldn’t be done remotely. Then, almost overnight, they were working effectively from home. Some organizations have gone completely virtual because of the pandemic, giving up their office leases for good. Others have begun onboarding new hires remotely, which has required new management skills and additional effort to ensure employees feel included and trained properly. For example, if you have people at home who don’t have enough work to keep them busy, what can they be learning to help them be more
productive and effective once the recovery gets to that next phase? They may even have to develop entirely new skill sets if that’s what the post-closure business requires.
As you think about recovery and plan to rebuild, consider this time an opportunity to make necessary changes to your business. So many businesses were affected by this global event, and each will be finding its own way back. Now is the time to do that on your own terms, creating a stronger business that serves your customers and communities well.
PHASE 3: REBUILD
Because entrepreneurs think about opportunity, they have an optimistic and forward-looking mindset in the face of the dangers their businesses face. They become more focused. They can more clearly observe weaknesses and strengths. In fact, a crisis can cause the kind of out-ofthe-box thinking that can not only rebuild a business but reimagine it. Sure, there have been serious disruptions, but that kind of creativity and ingenuity are going to result in some amazing new ways of rebuilding something better in the post-pandemic economy.
In his book, Take Care of your People: The Enlightened CEO’S Guide to Business Success, Insperity CEO Paul Sarvadi coined the term “entrepreneurial faith,” which is the optimism of believing you’re going to get where you want to go. That kind of faith is contagious and pulls people along. It makes them want to help you succeed. So, go ahead and be an evangelist for your business. Embrace the opportunity to learn and change the game for your business. When you look back on this time, you’ll see that you learned much more when you were facing challenges than when you were just cruising along.
As you begin rebuilding your business, you may need to make tough decisions about where to invest your time and resources. Think about what you need to do to maintain the people, place of business, promotion, and other assets and actions you will need to bounce back. Keep a close eye on your financials, and run several scenarios to determine how you might need to pivot to survive additional lean times or maximize the gains when business turns around.
This is also an important time for ongoing communication. Turn to your employees, who have a vested interest in seeing the company succeed. They will likely have ideas and feedback that can be invaluable.
And don’t forget to stay in close contact with your customers. Find out what they need now. How have their businesses changed? And are there ways you can adapt what you offer or the way you do business so that you can strengthen those relationships as you rebuild?
In Insperity’s efforts to help customers navigate the challenges presented by COVID-19, it developed a framework called “The Resiliency Curve.” It begins with a people-first mindset and then takes the business owner through the journey from rescue to recover to rebuild. Those business owners who successfully navigate that journey emerge as an employer of choice, one able to successfully compete for talent even in the toughest job markets.