It’ll probably be months and even years before we’re able to understand the full influence of the Coronavirus pandemic on politics, culture, and society. But one thing that is clear even now is that the impact on the global economy is already significant. The forced closure of businesses both small and large has led to a stock market crash, skyrocketing unemployment rates, and many other changes in the working world.
But a smart business owner will not be discouraged by what is happening. Rather, they will adapt, using flexibility and an open mind to survive and perhaps even set you up for future success after the pandemic ends. Because there are lessons to be taken from COVID-19’s impact on businesses. Namely, organizations can turn to remote outsourcing as a way to save money, mitigate the effects of the pandemic, and keep their business afloat.
Cutting Costs
Unless you are lucky enough to be a company like Zoom or Instacart, your business’s cash flow is likely suffering from the effects of the global shutdown. If you’re in the travel industry, you might be struggling to bring in any money at all. That means that, if you want to stay afloat, you have to cut costs. You’ll have to find a way to do identify anything that isn’t essential and significantly reduce spending on it, if not cutting it out completely.
Additionally, you can look into cutting costs related to:
- Events and team-building activities
- Food and meal stipends for employees
- Recruitment and hiring of full-time, local employees
- Training and conferences
- Business credit cards
What About the Staff?
Remote outsourcing is one of the best ways to eliminate non-essential spending, which can potentially save your business. You’ll be able to keep a staff, maintain your business, and cut costs at the same time. It’s a flexible solution that you can tailor to your business’s particular needs. You can keep the full-time, local staff that are essential while supplementing with overseas workers, or even build teams that are totally remote. It’s up to you to decide what will work best for your organization.
Building a Remote Team
Depending on your field, there are many different opportunities for hiring remotely. Here are just a few examples.
Marketing, Media, and Advertising
From paid online ads to content marketing, there is a huge staff of remote workers with the skills, qualifications, and experience to help your company reach an audience of people who are spending much more time-consuming media than usual.
Customer Support
An extremely common area for outsourcing, customer service is a great candidate for remote work, with great opportunity to cut costs while maintaining a high standard of email, phone, and chat support.
Operations and Logistics
While your operations team may typically be heavily involved with maintaining the office space, there will be much more emphasis now on the HR and accounting functions of these employees. Conveniently, those are all tasks that can be easily done from a distance by remote employees.
Advisors and Consultants
Rather than paying the big bucks to bring in a local specialist to help consult and advise on such issues as mental health counseling and remote work tools, or even asking your current employees to try and master these areas without the relevant experience, turning to remote experts can help give you the high-quality advice you need without a big price tag attached.
Looking to the Future
Another major benefit of making a remote recruitment plan now is that it will also set you up for future success after this pandemic is over. In addition to helping you survive what could turn out to be our world’s most significant economic downturn in a century, outsourcing is also useful for organizations in times of economic prosperity.
You just might learn that there are areas you could have been saving money in this whole time without sacrificing any quality or productivity. You’ll move forward with a leaner operation, making it that much easier to rebuild your business when the time comes. That way, you’ll be ready to go and grow as soon as the opportunity arises.
