The bounce back: How a business can grow after COVID-19
The business world is always an uncertain one, with markets reacting – either negatively or positively – to the slightest thing. 2020 has been unique, however, in the way that businesses and their finances have been affected. The coronavirus pandemic has meant that many businesses have had to shut their doors altogether, and those that have survived have needed to change the way they worked to do so.
Now that news of a vaccine is in the air, and the world is settling down (even though COVID-19 is still extremely rife), business owners who have made it through in one piece will be looking at ways they can grow their business again, helping it to thrive after the downturn in 2020. This ‘bounce back’ is crucial if business owners want to get back to the position they were in before COVID-19 struck, and putting a plan in place now is all-important.

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Remote working as an advantage
Something that the majority of businesses – at least those that were able to – had to take on board in 2020 was remote working. If they wanted to continue bringing in any revenue, they had to re-think how their employees were able to do their jobs, and remote working was the ultimate solution. This idea wasn’t without its teething problems, of course; having to set up new systems at home, finding space to have a home office, being able to concentrate in a house full of family members and children who couldn’t go to school wasn’t necessarily ideal, but it did mean that businesses were able to continue, some limping along, some working steadily.
Although initially, business owners might have considered going back to how things were before coronavirus, having an office again and putting all the employees in one space, this might not be the best way to bounce back. To start with, the cost of the office is going to immediately cause havoc with any profits. Then there are the employees themselves; with remote working being shown to offer greater happiness, a better work-life balance, and overall more productivity once it is set up correctly, are business owners sure that they can disrupt the new way of life for so many and ask them to take on the long commutes and uncomfortable working environments once again?
Reconsidering customers’ needs
What a business did before the pandemic and what it does afterward might not change dramatically. It might not change at all. But for some business owners, it is going to have to change, and this is something they will need to think carefully about.
Whether it’s their online marketing campaigns, what they sell, how they sell it, or even their customers and their needs, carrying out additional market research to determine what has changed and how is crucial. For a business to try to make a comeback it is going to need to judge the mood of the customer, and if the mood has changed then so too must the business.
Some business owners are going to be concerned about this, worried that it might cause their business to fail at the last hurdle. However, this negative view can be overridden by the idea that this is a chance to make changes that will boost the business and make it more successful than it was before. Business owners can’t change what has happened over the last year, but they can improve their offerings because of it.