COVID-19: How businesses can emerge stronger – PwC

Sat, Aug 22, 2020
By editor
4 MIN READ

Business, Featured

By Anayo Ezugwu

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPER, PwC, Nigeria has said the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) is pressuring business leaders across the world to transform their organizations. PwC said company leaders are rethinking traditional approaches to doing business and reconfigure their business models.

In its CEO Panel Survey conducted in June and July 2020 as an extension of PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey, the company says business leaders around the world are faced with a series of high-stakes decisions. It explained that with a mounting global health crisis, they have to keep employees and customers safe, find alternative sourcing options, interpret shifting consumer preferences and, in some cases, figure out how to stay afloat.

According to PwC, some of their decisions were quick fixes, meant to solve an urgent problem, but others have revealed capabilities and opportunities that might not have seemed possible before, and that could fundamentally change their company’s business model.  “CEOs plan to develop a more flexible and employee-oriented workforce. They will increase the share of remote or contingent workers, and expand employee health, safety, and wellness programmes. Underpinning these emerging business models are several trends identified by respondents as enduring shifts, meaning CEOs expect them to continue after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents believe shifts towards remote collaboration, automation, low-density workplaces, and supply chain safety will have a lasting impact. Less expected were some of the changes caused by COVID-19 that CEOs view as temporary. For example, one-quarter of CEOs believe the trend towards climate change mitigation will be a short-term phenomenon (with another 28 percent not seeing any change when it comes to climate issues). And 43 percent think that the shift towards nationalism is temporary, despite the fact that populist and nationalist ideologies were on the rise before the pandemic,” it said.

According to the survey, companies should establish a flexible business and workforce plan and develop and evaluate scenarios that consider all aspects of the business — customers, products, real estate, and employees — and create a dynamic business and workforce plan that accounts for health, economic, and societal considerations. “The focus on greater flexibility is not just a crisis response; it is an evolution of how, when, and where work gets done.

“The pandemic proved to many leaders that employees don’t need to be physically onsite to be productive. Moreover, by approaching ‘work’ as something your organisation does rather than somewhere it goes, you can adopt new ways to serve clients, reduce costs, and gain access to new talent markets. At the same time, in some organisations, the work of a select group of high performers may be boosting productivity in a remote model that is not sustainable.

“Leaders will need a clear picture of what’s happening, and must proactively address issues related to equitable distribution of work, flexibility arrangements, and employee burnout and well-being. Invest in digital tools that will sustain your resilience. It took a global pandemic for some organisations to jump-start their digital transformation, but there’s no turning back now. They’ve seen how digitisation enables even the largest and most mature organisations to respond to the crisis, whether it’s standing up a remote work model or changing how customers interact with their products and services.

“A critical part of this transformation will be improving your organisation’s information supply chain and building a world-class analytics capability, together with a deliberate approach to building digital workforce capabilities. Take your commitment to agility to the next level. Embed the innovations you adopted during the crisis into your culture. Take the time to review your crisis response, catalogue best practices, and determine how to make those practices part of your organisation moving forward.

“Many businesses will be required by their stakeholders to begin assessing how other systemic risk and low-probability; high-impact events will affect them. Those that harness technology and new ways of working to sustain their operations, supply chains, employee experience and customers during a crisis will gain a competitive advantage. And it’s not just a matter of being reactive: understanding how your organisation can maintain agility will allow it to pursue new opportunities when it wants to, rather than when it has to,” it said.

– Aug. 22, 2020 @ 11:12 GMT |

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