Post-Covid 19, building a resilient business and a supporting team: Nayomi Handunnetti

Covid-19 pandemic challenged all the mainstream management principles and threw us right out of our comfort zones. Managing a business at this time has been difficult in different ways. With the lockdown and travel restrictions most of the organizations especially the Tourism industry struggled financially. With zero or insignificant revenue for periods of time, the organizations were left with no option but to reduce their cost structures resulting in layoffs or heavy pay cuts.

The buying power of people worldwide took a heavy blow, and this caused some serious rationalization of spending from luxury and leisure to essentials. For the Tourism industry, the recovery was stretched as a result.

However, as I see the hardest punch was taken by the mental health and stability of employees. Disrupting the job security, fear of getting infected by the virus, lack of entertainment, and forced changes to the lifestyles resulted in anxiety and stress levels of them. Productivity, creativity, and many other qualities that most of the businesses expect from the employees were negatively affected.

So, as a leader, you are required to sustain the business, whilst keeping your workforce motivated, whilst being agile to the rapidly changing situations. There are many instances where you had to juggle between your mind and heart.

You had to look at a pitch-black tomorrow and make decisions today. Which made every decision you take have a significant risk in it. The decision-making had to be really fast and conservative and well calculated. Cash flow was the key during this time period and drastic measures to not to spend on any luxuries or to spend a single cent unnecessarily.

As a leader, this is the time I have been closest to my employees as we realized this is when they needed us the most. We took measures to continuously support our staff and to be heard all the time. The culture and the values that the organization was built upon truly helped us survive.   

I can say we survived this situation because of the Entrepreneurial mindset which we have been fostering through the organization for many years. We continuously looked at new opportunities, new avenues where it can support the business.

However, converting opportunities to value required adaptability, fast decision making, and a laser-focused team.

The first and one of the hardest shifts we did in the business is to change the customer base from foreign travelers to local groups. Since the business was predominantly structured to cater to the foreign market, we needed to do too many major shifts. One from a marketing perspective and the other from an operational perspective.

The marketing of our business which was predominantly depended on foreign influencers and foreign online travel agents and local travel agents, which we had to change to attract the local crowd. Every element of our marketing material was redefined to attract the local groups. The packages we offered were redesigned, pricing the menu, the food preparation was changed based on the new market segment.

But we assured the quality was maintained in every aspect. We gave the customers the same level of experience but with a homely touch.

We rigorously looked at reducing the waste of the business. Using re-usable material, and tight controls of cost saved a considerable amount of money and we were able to sustain our business thus far.

We took this as an opportunity to improve the service by creating a good culture amongst the organization and taking care of not only our employees but their families in these unprecedented times. This is evident through the testimonials that we get from the customers in the recent past. As for me, this is the greatest win of all.

Post Covid-19 we have created an agile business model which can accommodate all types of guests, we have got a better understanding about our consumer, we have an efficient and low-cost operating model along with a great team who amazes the customer in service, food, extraordinary culture & values. That is what is been resilient by my definition.    

Nayomi Handunnetti - Award-winning - Entrepreneur & Marketing specialist, Doctoral Candidate, Fitness Enthusiast, Speaker, Blogger, Global Goodwill Ambassador & Mentor @ Women Empowered Global