- Discuss with employees how things are going at the company
If employees don’t understand what’s going on, they’re probably worried and wondering if it’s time to look for another job. Share how the company is doing financially, and show that you are willing to support workers in times of need.
Find out what’s bothering employees. Options on how to do this:
Ask for questions to be written on paper and handed to you.
Open an “anti-crisis” chat room in Telegram or other messenger.
Offer to send questions to you by email.
Hold regular short meetings once in a while to talk to people.
Sometimes something changes drastically-for example, the currency rate goes up 20% in a day or a supplier leaves the market. Discuss the event with your employees as soon as it becomes known. Explain how the news will affect the business and what you plan to do.
Sometimes organizing a general meeting is not possible. For example, people work in shifts and it is not realistic to get together even online. Then here’s what you can do:
Send an email to employees with answers to questions and information you want to share.
Record a voice message and post it in the general chat room.
Tell the truth. Show that you’re willing to support employees if things go wrong. Then they’ll feel a little more comfortable working.
What to talk about:
How the financial numbers change that rank-and-file employees understand: number of orders, profits, cost of materials.
How you will pay salaries and bonuses, pay vacations and sick leave.
How do you plan to solve problems to keep the staff. What results you want to achieve and by when.
If your employees have questions that you don’t know how to answer yet, tell them so. Promise you’ll try to get to the bottom of it by the next meeting.
- Maintain your usual pace of work
In a crisis, customers save even on everyday items, there are fewer customers. Employees sit idle, nervous and thinking that everything is bad. If you have a reduced amount of work, distract people from the oppressive thoughts with interesting tasks.
Train your employees. During the pandemic, furniture stores closed, and many entrepreneurs sent salespeople to sales training. When the restrictions were lifted, salespeople immediately began to communicate with customers in a new way. Stores quickly returned to their previous sales numbers, although traffic was still low.
If sending employees for training is expensive for you, figure out how to develop them internally:
Let the more experienced professionals share their knowledge with the rest. A master cabinetmaker can teach woodcarving to carpenters for a bonus to their paycheck.
Talk to your supplier. Large companies often train their partners’ and dealers’ employees for free.
Find free training materials online – books, webinar recordings, and entire courses. Tell your employees about them, read, watch, and discuss new information together.
Take care of things that you didn’t have time for before. When employees have fewer urgent tasks, you can test out new ideas.
What you can do in a crisis with your team:
Create and test scripts. Get together with sales managers and prepare scripts to talk to customers. Read how to do this in the article “How Small Businesses Write Phone Scripts.”
Implement a CRM system. While there are few orders, employees can master the program at ease.
Develop typical solutions. For example, you are engaged in the repair of apartments. Prepare 3-4 projects in different styles. You will have ready options for customers who are satisfied with the standard design.
Conduct a survey among customers. Find out what they think about your company and product to fix the flaws and attract more customers. How to do this, told in the article “Ask customers: surveys as a business tool”.
- Reduce costs.
Think about what you can save money on. To do this, look at your spending over the last year: how much, when, and to whom you paid. Pay attention to three expense items.
Contractors. Usually these are accountants, lawyers, system administrators, marketing specialists, security guards, cleaners. Some contractors can be waived for a while:
Outsource duties to employees. A freelance designer used to design new hoodie designs. Now that can be passed on to a seamstress for a pay raise.
Switch to services. You can stop paying an outsourced accountant if you transfer the account to a bank and connect an online accounting service for free.