fbpx
Efficacy AMS > Blog > General > Contingency Planning for SME’s during COVID-19

Contingency Planning for SME’s during COVID-19

March 19, 2020 General
Contingency Plan

Most of the small and medium business owners are worried about the possible impact of the Covid-19 to their business and to their workers. As we are venturing into an unknown territory, certain level of anxiety and fear is natural and hence it’s essential to have a basic contingency plan to manage the unforeseen circumstances.

Prepare a Core Team:

Unlike big companies, SME’s can’t ask all their employees to work from home. We need our staff at office, as they are constantly in firefighting mode to get the parts from the supplier or getting the manpower from the contractors or managing the logistics of customer orders. Hence the best option is to divide the teams as core team and support team.
In our office, we have formed two core teams. The top core team is completely quarantined, and they are not exposed to other teams on their daily working. Following are the precautions and focus areas to be followed by the Top-Core team:

  • Members of this team do not use public transport to reach office
  • They must use their own vehicle to reach office and all their expenses will be fully reimbursed by the company
  • This team is equipped with proper knowledge about the COVID virus and the worst-case scenarios that may arise soon
  • This team has just one member each from HR and Finance with the MD/CEO of the company. They are collectively responsible for the people and funds.
  • Their Key focus is to collect all the outstanding from the customers and pay all the dues to the suppliers and employees on-time.
  • Preserve CASH and defer the expenses at this point of time, as CASH is KING.

Second Level Core Team:

  • This team comprises members from operations, hr, accounting and customer service.
  • Ideally this team should not be having more than 6 members
  • This team is responsible for day to day running of the business and they directly interact with the top core team.
  • Typical organisation hierarchy is not followed in this system. For example, a customer service manager (who is part of the core team) is equipped to take decisions regarding a mode of transport for a customer delivery. He may not take the approval from his general manager.
  • Similarly, HR manager can take a decision regarding the requirement of manpower by himself. He evaluates the various options for work force management, including work from home option.
  • However, all the decisions taken by the second level core team is updated to the Top-Core team before executing the decisions.

The support team is a normal working team from all the departments with the key focus on the communication. All the important decisions regarding the situation is updated and communicated to all the workers through the support team of the respective departments. The key focus of the support team is to vastly improve the communication and reduce the anxiety and fear of the employees.

Every company must prepare a contingency plan for an unforeseen circumstance, irrespective of their size and business nature. This is to ensure the continuity of the business at worst-case scenarios like natural disasters, medical emergencies or sudden demise of the owner.

You may also like