A Series of Feelings during Lockdown: Nervous

Nervous.

The workforce is imbalance now.

Every day there are news about companies retrenching. Companies are overstaffed now. And I believe it’s overstaffed because the products and services are not serving what the market needs at this moment. But I also believe it does not mean the products and services are not going to serve the market in the future. Honestly, nobody really knows what is going to happen. Will they find a cure in the next six months? Will they find a vaccine in the next twelve? Even when it’s found, will people still behave the same? So, what do we do now? We do what matters.

Now, this is the thing, whilst we hear everyday millions have lost their jobs, yet you hear the front-liners are working day and night without rest. Most people are talking about business lost, because the economy has slowed down so much. While, there is this small group of people, whose eyes are wide open, seeing business opportunities. For the past few weeks I’ve received quotations on sanitizing services, supplies of PPEs, and the all new Covid-19 Sanitization Kiosk, which I find really clever.

And that is what we need to be now. Be clever. Take a look at the business. Which part of the business has the most potential? Do you see business opportunities? If you don’t, then ask what do you need to change to make your services more relevant to serve the market needs? Then, analyze the workforce that you have. Who do you need to re-purpose so the labor cost would make more business sense?

1.      Digital Marketing is more important than ever because people are spending more time browsing the internet especially on social media platforms. Most companies I know have a dedicated person or team focusing on creating social media contents. Now, it’s the time to double the size of that team to engage the market and brand the company so when the market is ready for our services, we will be first in the market’s mind to reach out.

 2.      Offer new services. I have this friend who works for a digital payment company. He was telling me most of his clients are small businesses and since the pandemic, their business has slowed down leading to lesser transactions. His company bills the clients on a transaction basis; hence their business is suffering too because lesser transactions means lesser billings. Do you see an opportunity there? Tell me if this could work. Small businesses, right, so they probably do not have a good marketing team. If your business is suffering that means you are probably overstaffed too. Re-purpose a team to provide marketing services to help the clients to market their products to assist them to increase their transactions and charge a commission fee in exchange for the marketing services. Win-win-win.

 3.      Training! This is the best time to conduct training. In every company, there will be someone who is very good at something who could teach. Be it communication skills, a refresher on policies, or something technical like an excel class or employment act. Even if there is nobody good enough to train, there are so many training programs available online now which is free! Teach people new skills to accommodate your changed services. Train people to train more people so all of us can stay relevant to the business now.

 4.      Re-purpose. I went to the shopping mall recently. It’s different now. Much quieter. Entrances are limited because shoppers’ temperatures are required to be screened manually by the security guards. There are long queues at shops because shoppers are required to scan a QR code to register, have their temperatures checked again and hands sanitized before they are allowed to enter by the shop’s new bouncer who used to be a retail assistant. Instead of hiring, what the companies did was re-purposing the roles of the security guards and the shop assistants. Think about it for a second. We could do the same for our organization too. Companies direction is no replacement in the event somebody resigns and stretch the current team’s capacity. Do this often enough, there will be an imbalance. The overstretched team will break. A suggestion would be look at the “slower” part of the business and identify who we could train and re-purpose to fill in the gap instead. A temporary secondment. Make sense?

There is this documentary called “Twenty Feet From Stardom” about backup singers. There is this part the documentary pointed out how the backup singers are losing work to technology. Instead of hiring backup singers, the technology of audio mixing has made it possible to duplicate the singer’s voice as the background vocals. A good example is Ed Sheeran performing his hit song Photograph singing the line “hearing you whisper through the phone, wait for me to come home” repeatedly in Glastonbury back in 2017 all by himself. And I was thinking, while an opportunity is lost within the backup singers community, there are new opportunities for sound engineers and audio mixers. The great Alexander Graham Bell said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” We do not have enough nurses and doctors? Make nursing and medical schools more affordable so we can train more of them.

As cliché as it sounds, the world is changing everyday. The way we work and behave is begging us to adapt quickly. Our products and services need to adapt quickly. How the workforce is structured needs to adapt quickly. How business is conducted need to adapt quickly. Because, this is the new normal. Being to adapt quickly to change. Yes, it’s disrupting. But the coronavirus has disrupted almost everything, hasn’t it? Chinese has a saying, we fight evil with evil. So, we disrupt the disruption.

Yes, we. Together. Because the workforce is precariously imbalance now and it takes all of us to come together and shake things up so we can come to a harmonic balance. Quickly.

Nervous, I am.

#kitajagakita #inthistogether #disrupt #repurpose #theaspiredCXO