Author name: BpWebPraveen

When mobility was limited during the Covid lockdowns, people had to work from home. Months after the lockdowns were lifted, many employees still worked from home. A vestigial organ we attained during the plague is continuing to be useful. Companies must engage in some level of cost cutting to survive recessions, unfortunately this is often in the form of downsizing. Lowering productivity at a time of scarcity may be detrimental. Digital tools can provide cost saving benefits without compromising productivity. Working remotely:Rush hour traffic was always a problem in cities. 34.5% of participants in a 2017 study spent 1 hour and 30 minutes of each day on employment related traveling. You might be wondering how they got to work so quickly. This study gathered information from the country as a whole, but densely packed cities and suburbs suffer greater delays owing to rush hour traffic. As you may know all too well, sitting around in traffic causes stress; which has been demonstrated to nip into productivity in the workplace. Crawling up fuel queues is an equally counterproductive activity that has become mandatory for commuters. By switching to work from home, employees can save time, money, and sanity by avoiding tedious dailycommutes and the despair of being baked alive in a parked car. Though some bosses may grumble about employees being too lax when they’re at home, emerging studies have found many cases where remote workers are more productive. Much of the improvements were attributed to time savings from the aforementioned, yet a clear increase in efficiency is visible. Giving ownership of their work environments to workers allows them to self govern and work in environments better suited to their personality. Renting office space is expensive, particularly so in urban zones. Switching over employees to working remotely cuts down on overhead. This may seem like offloading expenses onto employees -which it sometimes is, but consider that most suburbanites already benefit from some sort of home office setup. Decisions powered by statistics:Web sites can gather a worrying amount of information about customers. Ignoring the ethical implications, even just knowing what sites your customers have visited gives you an insight into their interests. When devising how your product or service should be changed, this insight may be invaluable. For example, a restaurant can find out whether customers who use their site also visit sites like UberEats before launching their own delivery service. Hundreds of tools exist to record users’ activities. Without any additional effort on an employee’s part, a program running in the background can log relevant details like screen time and file access. With this data a manager can identify parts of the production process that require streamlining. For example- a worker who spends more time using Excel than expected mayrequire additional training in spreadsheets. Otherwise difficult to see problems can be addressed. Free Software:Many companies still sit in the palms of monopolies like Microsoft when it comes to software. Unfortunately for such monopolies, computer programs are infinitely replicable. For every “software as a service” program an employee may use, free and open-source alternatives exist. Instead of Microsoft Office, one could use LibreOffice or OpenOffice for word processing. Instead of PhotoShop, one could perform image manipulation with Krita or GIMP. Many of these applications offer similar features compared to their commodified counterparts, with some outstanding members -like Blender- beingindustry leading. Though cloud services will still depend on subscriptions for running costs, there’s no need to pay pricey subscriptions for an infinitely replicable program like Microsoft Word. Cutting out inessential expense by shifting to free and open-source software can save money without sacrificing productivity. Since some closed source applications are notorious for anti-features and bloat, you may even notice an increase in productivity. Depending on the industry you hail from and the productivity you aspire to achieve, there could be various technological solutions that can be introduced. Keep your eyesand ears open to the strangest bottlenecks and do some reading; you could be surprised at the options that are available.

The acronym VUCA was used frequently in US Army War College documents, though the ideas were described a decade earlier in a book titled “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge”. VUCA aims to support leaders in their efforts to comprehend and contend with a fickle environment; through awareness, adaptability, and contingency planning. A VUCA World: Volatility: Supply and demand will fluctuate as history unfolds. Looking to the recent plague for an example, note that demand for office space dipped since lockdowns kept people at home. In nations where precautions weren’t taken, labor shortages ensued since people were too afraid of the plague to work. All across the world, anxiety over potential shortages convinced people to empty shelves at stores which in turn caused shortages. Even events far less dramatic than a pandemic may send ripples through society changing what people need and how those needs are met. Uncertainty: Knowing what could possibly happen next in our world is difficult. Knowing exactly what would happen next is impossible. In 1954 the US detonated a high yield thermonuclear device on a coral reef amidst the Marshal Islands. Some of the best nuclear scientists in the world swore the experiment would cause merely “acceptable” levels of fallout. Their predictions were off. An unforeseen interaction in the fusion fuel amplified the weapon’s output by a factor of 3. Consequent fallout seriously irradiated adjacent islanders and fishermen, then prompted an international incident after winds spread nuclear ash far andwide. Complexity: The human world was always composed of numerous components interacting with each other in unique ways. Stepping away from the beloved plague, consider how modern supply chains often require collaboration from multiple entities scattered across multiple countries. Each link on the chain has their own group of stakeholders to appease and checkbooks to balance. Ambiguity: Limitations in available information conflated by difficulties in interpretation gives rise to an obscured image; some pieces of the puzzle are missing and some are fading out. This issue is exacerbated by insincere actors who deliberately impede understanding. Worst of all, some people do it to themselves. Kodak’s refusal to embrace digital photography in spite of the signs pointing in that direction is a famous example of such delusion. Surviving in a VUCA world: Firmament: Turbulence will tug at you from all directions. In the absence of guiding principles, any enterprise will eventually succumb to caprice. Remember what you set out to do, and ensure these motivations are shared by your workers. Self Awareness: Familiarise yourself with your team. Understand their strengths and weaknesses to picture what you are capable of as a unified force. When deciding on a course of action, do so with your enterprise’s capabilities and limitations in mind. Openness: Be open to criticism. The only thing worse than being told you’re wrong is continuing to be wrong. Listen to your employees and customers. Your employees are familiar with facets of productions that you don’t see. Your customers know what your product may be lacking. Criticism shines light on blind spots, protecting you from your own hubris. Innovation: Be willing to employ novel solutions. Though straying from the beaten path is risky, finding a better way will keep you competitive. Mobility: Act early and use the time you saved to make corrections where necessary. Retooling a large organization as a whole to take advantage of some development may take too long. Instead, consider adapting a detachment of your force that can respond immediately. If you later on decide to adapt the enterprise as a whole, experience gained through the detachment will prove invaluable. Daring: Don’t be afraid of failure, if you can afford that luxury. Inaction can often be the worst response to a situation. Take measured risks and be attentive to feedback if a project blows over. Savings: Rainy day funds are a must. Not only could reserves keep your business breathing through a catastrophic failure, knowing such a failure can be stomached will make you more venturesome. Contingency: When things can go either way, have fallback plans for multiple outcomes. Forethought with the right information can save you from getting blindsided. Having a course of action prepared for when disaster strikes could be the difference between sinking and swimming. It’s tempting to focus on a vinier of stability instead of the difficult reality underneath. If you can accept the instability that is inherent to our world, you can learn to overcome it. Ignore it, and you won’t see until it hits you. Prepare for upsets, be willing to experiment and always pay attention to cues.

As business owners, partners, managers and sometimes even as young executives, all of us have the responsibility of pulling our socks up and responding to the need of the hour. In a highly volatile world with numerous challenges being thrown at us everyday, businesses face circumstances that have never been imagined. When the unexpected hits us, it is not growth, expansion, product development or traction that is important; instead, the buzz word becomes survival. Businesses, irrespective of how large or small, old or new, need ‘doers’; people who are unafraid to get down on their hands and kneesand work hard; those who are not going to watch labels or titles and will ensure that the job gets done and those who know what needs to be prioritised. If your business is facing a setback or needs to first survive before thinking of thriving, adjust your resources so that these fighters are put to the main stream. At the same time, train, guide and coach all the other staff to become resilient and turn on survival mode for the betterment of themselves as well as the business. Here are a few roles of survival that have to be played by teams when the demands are high in that aspect. 01. Handling the Cash Flow The cash flow of a business is similar to the blood circulation in our body and for everything in the business to function there has to be sufficient cash or prudent cash handling. Having a trusted financing partner such as Purewin can be a source of relief in crunch situations, but the team that handles the cash flow must be adept at understanding crucial business requirements and adjusting the operations to make the most of the available liquidity. 02. Running the Daily Operation Seasoned hands that are able to handle issues and face challenges in day to day business running need to be put in charge. The core functions of a business need to run smoothly irrespective of the circumstances to ensure business continuity. The team that handles the core functions have to be able to adapt and change the operations to suit the macro environmental factors within a short span of time. 03. Facing Customers and Answering Difficult Questions Ensuring that the most patient and attentive staff are employed to handle the customer service desk is equally important. Customers tend to be more cautious during difficult times and if they are reassured of a smooth operation, if their complaints are attended to without delay and if their concerns are looked into, they would be more relaxed about obtaining products or services from your business. The front line staff should be trained and educated on handling the complicated questions that can come from customers as they will only be able to put a customer at ease, if they are confident about theissue. 04. Handling Technical and Technological Lapses If systems are not working as expected, if technical issues keep popping up, keep the tech gurus at hand to resolve the issues and have a spokesperson who can handle the queries. The principal task is to get the issues fixed, but the users, customers and other stakeholders who are worried, need to be given reasonable answers and assurances of service resumption. Quickly sketch out a plan with the fighters heading the teams to take the business through the rough patch. The plans may not be perfect, but with the survival mode being switched on, there is a lot that can be achieved during a crisis.

To buy the same groceries for our households and pump the same amount of fuel for our vehicles, we are paying a lot more than we used to – in simple terms, this is inflation. If our incomes didn’t increase along with the increases in prices, it can be challenging to save or invest. However, given that tougher times are probably yet to come, it is advisable to save some of your income for the future. It is a tough time to make decisions about investments, both due to the difficulty in allocating funds for savings and due to many market instruments losing attractiveness in the face of the crisis. However, here are a few options that you could probably consider in Sri Lanka at present. Purchasing land and property is a smart decision as long as you evaluate the locality and the factorsaffecting the development of the area in the short and medium term. If you choose carefully, you couldeasily sell the property at a future date for a much higher price as a result of the inflationary impacts.If not, you could choose to develop the property and earn rent on a monthly basis which would help youto counter the impacts of inflation on your purchasing power.Purewin’s tailor made mortgage loan schemes can be useful if you are considering investing in real estateas there would be both financial support and professional advice. Monitor the price patterns carefully and invest in gold or other precious metals as per your preference.Generally it is advisable to invest in gold biscuits or coins as they retain the value of gold entirely unlikepieces of jewellery. Investing in gold can help to save you a lot of money in the future when you actually need to purchase gold as you have the option of melting the gold and having it converted to jewellery.Moreover, the purchase of gold will ensure that you generate a better yield from your hard earned moneythan keeping it in the form of cash itself. Investing in the stock market through the Colombo Stock Exchange is a proven method of generating a high return. However, as is the case with all investments where the returns are high, there is aconsiderable risk of the share prices plummeting. Therefore, it is important to assess the financial stabilityand growth prospects of the companies that you intend to invest in.While treasury bills and bonds have traditionally been seen as secure instruments to invest in due to thebacking of the government, this article has considered other alternatives. What one must bear in mind isthat there could be dynamics in the economy which defy the usual rules of thumb when it comes toinvestments during inflationary times. Hence, it is always best to connect with a specialist who would beable to provide proper insights and guidance on your investment decisions.