The impact of Covid-19 has been devastating and has forced everyone to rethink how we do things. From travel, to school to working. A lot of employers have had to think fast and change how they operate, so as to stay afloat as well as keep employees safe.
Working from home
This has been by far the strategy that most companies have taken up. Employees had to stay home and work remotely. Employers on the other hand discovered that a lot would be done when employees work remotely, and there was no need for all that office space.
Among the affected services are office bars and restaurants that depended on the employees to come to the office. The services that benefited were home internet, which a lot of people took up as well as home décor services, as most people felt the need to change how their houses looked like, since they spent all their time indoors.
Online shopping for food, drinks and household shopping also saw a great demand.
Online meetings
Did you know companies spend a lot of time in meetings? Since the beginning of Covid-19, a lot of companies turned to online meetings, using services like zoom, skype and google hangouts.
It was from these meetings that employees realized that a thirty-minute meeting is probably all that was needed. Long hours in a meeting, tea breaks and long introductions have been cut short as companies try to remain as efficient as possible.
Redundancies at work
Most companies have had to let employees go for one reason and the other. A lot of positions have been declared redundant, as companies restructure to have people work from home. Unfortunately, the jobs of cleaners, office admins and tea girls were the first jobs to go. As companies tried to resize stay afloat, a lot more jobs were lost.
Hotels and restaurants that did not have clients had to let go of their staff as more and more hotels closed down during the pandemic.
Pay cuts
Top managers at many companies have had to take 20 -30% pay cuts to keep their jobs. This has prevented a lot of job losses for the top management, and most have had to take on more responsibilities.
With downsizing of companies, a lot of employees have been forced to take on more than one job, meaning longer working hours to fill the gaps and allow the companies to stay above the water.
Government subsidies
For companies in Kenya, the Government reduced the taxes on goods by 2% as well as 5% PAYE from employee’s salaries. Financial institutions also introduced covid loans to businesses, to enable them to stay open and manage to pay suppliers .
Door to door deliveries
As we all stayed indoors, a lot of companies thought of the many ways their products could get to our doorstep. Most partnered with delivery apps, while others had drop off services. Some succeeded and some failed.
Retail stores had to think of innovative ways to get your essentials to your house, from vegetables to household items.
All in all, many businesses have had to rethink their strategy as well as their management style. With the promise of the vaccine in 2021, we will see if these companies will adopt these new strategies or go back to their old ways of doing things.