Week by week, workers are returning to work.
The challenge is to optimize current resources, which in most cases have been reduced after the coronavirus crisis; and -at the same time- comply with the safety distancing rules.
The key question is: How to create added value to activities in this new environment?
We detail three points that we consider essential to optimize production in the de-escalation phase:
1. Address employee concerns and individuals’ safety
Ensuring the safety and well-being of employees in the workplace is key. Workers need the orientation and guidance from their senior managers. Positioning yourself in a close and humane place is important to address staff concerns in an open and transparent manner. This “closeness” will help generate a special bond at a time that requires this type of measure to ensure business continuity.
2. Communicate what role each worker plays in the new reality
Once the company has decided on the new security and social distance measures, it must be communicated to the workers the impact that these changes have on their jobs within the “new normal”.
It is essential that people clearly understand that their work is key to business continuity. Each worker must be aware of how their new role influences the improvement of the efficiency of the company.
3. Obtain tangible short-term results
Values, habits and practices within a company must be aimed at improving results at a time as special as the one we have to live. Processes improvement can, and should, take place during the crisis; with the aim of re-emerging stronger and with a greater competitive advantage.
It is time to take advantage of the current situation to implement practices that reinforce the strategy, the standardization of methods and times, and operations. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to develop people and processes, practice innovation and improvement, even in a telework environment, and prepare for a vertical start and a strategic response to the new normal reality that is already here and has come to stay.
For more than 30 years, at Itemsa we have been specialists in technical projects to improve productivity and increase of added value and flexibility.
Productivity, like innovation, are activities closely linked to people; they are not “things”. We firmly believe in ethical productivity. Thought, created and developed for the well-being of people. Our job is to make everyone feels how the changes benefit both the company and themselves. Only through genuine commitment efficient solutions can be reached.
A healthy company is more productive
In short, the Covid-19 crisis means a before and after for many companies. The distancing, the security measures and the uncertainty invite to practicing reinvention in a context where everything happens at high speed.
The new normality invites us to bet on motivating and caring for our teams. A worker who feels valued is an efficient worker. Promoting hygiene and health measures in the workplace is one way to go.
Competitiveness depends on finding new formulas that increase employee satisfaction, well-being and confidence. And, at the same time, practice ethical productivity through innovation and process improvement as essential activities to overcome the barriers posed by the post-covid world.
