Strategic Emergence™ from the Covid-19 Pandemic: Part Two - Process

This is the second installment of Orion’s Strategic Emergence™ series. The previous installment was Part One – People.

All organizations are faced with the challenge of how to re-open from the coronavirus pandemic. During today’s uncertainty one thing is known – tomorrow is not going to work like yesterday. According to Forrester, “organizations must establish pandemic management protocols before returning employees to work.”

From the CEO and COO to the HR director to the Facilities Manager and everyone in between need to engage in strategic thinking to envision the new workplace and create new processes and procedures as part of the re-open road map. Emerging from this pandemic requires focus on how the business will manage their spaces and their most important asset, their people.

This also an opportunity for organizations to reconnect with their people, listen, and truly understand what changes can and should be made for a better workplace environment. Business leaders who take time during this pause to think things through, incorporate lessons learned, and create processes and procedures that leverage the new ways their people are working together, will emerge stronger!

People, Process, Technology, Sustainability

From the first day in business, Orion Global Solutions has structured all our services around people, process, technology, and sustainability (for both business and the planet). It is the backbone of how we do business and its relevance could not be more important than it is today.

Strategic Emergence™ includes new long-term processes and procedures that support all the people who make the business thrive. “Employees, customers, suppliers, and communities are watching—and will have long memories. If the pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that people and organizations are interconnected and responsible to one another and to society in ways beyond short-term earnings,” according to a McKinsey and Company report.

Processes and Procedures

Organizations need to re-evaluate corporate and workplace processes and procedures. These represent how people relate to each other and their physical surroundings. In many cases, people will be working and engaging both remotely and in-person and businesses need the right processes and procedures in place to empower communication and decisions while also ensuring safety and wellbeing.

In re-evaluating current processes and procedures, business leaders need to focus on how they relate behaviors in the workplace. Re-opening means some people will be returning to a physical location and some won’t. Strategic emergence only happens if the new processes continue to support the new communications and relationships built during the pandemic and address new business requirements.

Obvious new processes and procedures revolve around ensuring employee safety, starting the moment they arrive in the workplace. Strategies around shift management, to ensure appropriate physical distances can be sustained, to decisions on criteria for entering the workplace are all on the table. Orion works with business leaders to tackle these issues by utilizing Salesforce’s strategies from their COVID-19 Response Playbook and recent extension to their platform, work.com.

Initial new processes include taking everyone’s temperature before allowing them to enter the office/facility, sign-in or check-in when they do enter, and distribution of items such as masks and hand sanitizers. Other new processes revolve around meeting protocols such as how to enter and exit a conference room, how the room is maintained for cleanliness, how close people can get to each other – even when sitting at their desks.

More complex processes and procedures include communications and decision-making. This is where true opportunities for change, and future growth, are found.

Communications

McKinsey and Company found that luckily, many CEOs and business leaders are learning lessons from their ability to pivot during the pandemic. “Looking ahead to a post-pandemic world (in which fast will still beat slow), how can companies make sure their decisions are truly better than before? Start by understanding the types of decisions you make and what practices matter for each type.”

Communication regarding new expectations on how people work, interact, and behave are vital to successfully keeping everyone safe and aligned with the new company processes and procedures. These are not short-term solutions. The new processes and procedures will create ongoing individual “office standards” that are the framework to strategically emerge from lockdown into a renewed “we’re in this together” business.

Part of the Orion Global Solutions’ Strategic Emergence road map includes frequent conversations with CEOs, our clients, and partners about how the pandemic has affected their businesses. We’ve learned a great deal from these conversations – their challenges and their solutions – and continue to evolve our road map while building stronger relationships as we listen and learn.

Watch for Part Three of this series – Technology. It will cover they types of technology – hardware, software, SaaS, and security – companies will need to support remote employees. And click here to read Part One - People.