The COVID-19 wave in Singapore has impeded many businesses, forcing a majority into closure due to the quarantine measures implemented. Many industries were caught unprepared and were forced to cut costs in the form of retrenchment and downsizing. Albeit unfortunate, the best lessons are usually learnt the hard way. Businesses are now implementing measures to ensure that in the event of a future pandemic, the business will be able to sustain itself by transforming core processes with ease.

So the question is, how does a business prepare for a future pandemic? As daunting as it sounds, many businesses have already or are in the process of implementing these measures. Let’s take a look at 5 ways a business can prepare for a future pandemic and pandemic-proof your business accordingly.

1) Digitalization

During the country-wide quarantine in Singapore, many businesses were unable to assume regular operations. The quarantine affected many industries with the 3 biggest hit industries being F&B, Retail and Hospitality. However, with a country-wide quarantine, many people turned to the internet for information, entertainment, communication and even to shop! This reinforces the importance for businesses to digitalize themselves in order to stay relevant in such a time.

Even without a pandemic, many consumers will turn to the internet due to convenience and cost efficiency. Retail companies invest in adopting an e-commerce model for the business on top of their regular brick-and-mortar. This ensures that customers can still connect and purchase from a business without having the need to leave the comfort of their own homes. F&B businesses turn to platforms like GrabFood, FoodPanda and Deliveroo to name a few. These platforms were already popular and readily available for businesses to integrate easily and digitalize their sales process.

However, digitalization is an ongoing process of implementing, integrating and optimising. This requires the business to hire niche talents too. Through the digitalization process, it brings us one step closer to pandemic-proof your business.

2) Social Media

To further elaborate the point on digitalization and pandemic-proof their business, businesses should tap on social media to establish a presence with their customers as well. Social media platforms are used as a form of communication tool to inform, educate, engage and even sell to customers. With over 4.20 billion users globally which is roughly 53% of the entire world’s population. This further reinforces the importance of establishing a consistent and strong social media presence.

This has given a rise in demand for digital marketers. According to data from LinkedIn, there is an increase in demand for marketers with skills in paid social media by 116.4%. There is also an increase in demand for other social media marketing skills from content to analytics. With the rise in demand, the race to hire a competent and qualified marketer becomes even more challenging, forcing businesses to offer higher compensation packages for these skills.

3) Having a positive mindset

Besides the economy taking a hit, the pandemic has also affected the lives of individuals globally. With the buildup stress from quarantine, the lack of connection with friends & family, the high unemployment rates, and the danger of COVID-19 – the struggle was evident for many. Despite it all, we are now in the recovery phase with the economy slowly picking up and employment on the rise. However, due to the abrupt changes, many still struggle to remain positive and adapt accordingly.

More important than ever, supervisors and managers play an important role in leading and motivating at work. Leaders will have to implement and integrate necessary changes at the workplace while at the same time, ensure that employees are able to adapt to these changes. Hiring a competent leader may be a challenge, one has to be highly adaptable to unpredictable changes, exude positivity in the work environment, listen to understand the difficulties of employees, train employees to adapt and at the same time, motivate them to adopt a similar positive mindset.

4) Customer service oriented

With the quarantine, many consumers become disconnected with businesses due to the lack of physical interaction. This is more evident with traditional businesses without the integration of digitalization. With those fast enough to adapt or have already digitalized, many shift their focus to emphasize on providing exceptional customer service through digital platforms.

More than ever, going digital throws a myriad of other choices of goods and services for consumers to choose. The emphasis on customer service ensures consumers are kept in the loop, giving them a platform to communicate and engage with the business. More often than not, what sets a business apart from another along with a positive lasting impression is from the customer service rendered. Ensuring that your business is equipped with trained customer service employees will give you an advantage over your competitors. As the saying goes “A customer does not care how much you know until they know how much you care”.

5) Partnerships

Leveraging on partnerships can give businesses an advantage by being more cost efficient, providing more value for consumers, streamlining business processes or by integrating additional revenue channels. This is more evident for F&B businesses adopting the food delivery model. During the quarantine, GrabFood and Deliveroo saw a spike in demand by 20% while FoodPanda had an increase of orders by 15%. Through partnerships, businesses can pool resources to achieve their goals more efficiently and with a greater impact.

Implementing these measures better prepares a business at adapting if another global pandemic were to happen. They can pandemic-proof their business accordingly. However, as mentioned, these measures require hiring niche talents to be able to strategise, implement, integrate and optimise these processes. Finding these talents are a challenge for businesses due to the high demand. Some businesses turn to process outsourcing to spread the risks as it is more cost effective, and it can be terminated once the service is no longer needed.

One such service is manpower recruitment process outsourcing that assists businesses to delegate their hiring to human resource outsourcing companies. When investing in a recruitment process outsourcing company, it is crucial to ascertain if the company is able to meet your needs, the credibility as well as portfolio of clients under the outsourcing company.

The leading manpower outsourcing company is Singapore is TalenSpot which provides customised recruitment process services to a variety of industries from retail chain stores & e-commerce, finance & real estate, healthcare & pharmaceutical, education, logistics, manufacturing, and automotive. We have a team of highly qualified niche consultants for each industry. TalentSpot also caters to all types of recruitment process outsourcing from “end-to-end”, mass-hiring and even contract staffing.

At TalentSpot, we’re able to provide you with the talent you need by leveraging our vast database of candidates. We are connected to 8 countries across Asia Pacific to diversify our talent pool and at the same time, we’re able to provide you the recruitment support you need in these countries.

Contact our consultants today to enquire on how we can pandemic-proof your business and support your recruitment needs!