The World Health Organisation was first put on alert about the novel coronavirus in December 2019, and only a few short months later, life has changed at a scale once reserved for science fiction novels. With many of us and our colleagues around the world now on lockdown, there are few lives not being effected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we can’t be certain about what lies ahead, we know that the crisis is still in crescendo, and today many find themselves with uncertain streams of income as employers take various measures to weather the storm. Hitting nearly every sector of human experience, the economic impact of the virus is hard to overstate.
We expect governments to become more involved. As with the financial crisis of 2008, world leaders have already stepped in to mitigate potential disaster situations, and it’s possible we will see governments take ownership of key industries in the short-term. Early actions taken in South Korea and Singapore serve as case studies in how to effectively curb the spread of the virus. Most nations are desperately trying to play catch-up.
We all understand this situation won’t last forever – but we shouldn’t assume life will revert back to how it was prior to the crisis. We’re entering a “new normal”, a new business as usual. We must take pandemic risks into account, and with concern over climate emergencies, business continuity plans must be more robust than ever. Some industries will prove to be quite resilient. The hard reality is that some industries will be tasked with adapting. Most of us will see our industries change in significant measure, re-shaping business models to allow for new capabilities and mitigate against new types of risk. Perhaps most visible is the push to bring ways of working online.
The move to “online everything” isn’t a new trajectory, but the timeline has been pushed forward due to lockdowns. Businesses must have the ability to provide, track and manage every activity via the internet. Questions businesses will need to ask themselves include how to ensure they’re proactively capturing the associated challenges with remote working, how to make the best use of this potential lifestyle change, and how to capitalise on the productivity advantages that come along with it.
GHD will be issuing a series of think pieces over the coming weeks, aimed at exploring how our industries will be adjusting to this new norm, how digitisation and “everything online” will come to life, and how businesses can adapt to new forms of continuity risks today and in the future.
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