How enterprises can thrive in times of disruption

The pandemic has caused tremendous disruption in people’s lives and in business, forcing organisations to rethink, reimagine, and reconsider their processes and ways of working to enhance performance, motivate the workforce, and increase overall efficiency.

These days, disruption is the norm. Learning how to survive and even thrive in the face of disruption is essential.

The measure of success for many businesses today is how resilient their enterprise is in response to shortfalls and how they adapt to changing circumstances.

Thriving in changing times

The current challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic can be treated as an obligation or an opportunity. It’s up to today’s leaders to decide how they acclimate to the new normal. This starts with embracing a strategy grounded in disruption and centred around customers.

This strategy requires businesses to widen their perspective, look past their current business status and further towards future customers. It also requires enterprises to empathise with their customers, understand who they are and tailor communication strategies to suit their needs.

Employees are one of the most important stakeholders for businesses and their contributions must be valued and recognised. This is why, to thrive in challenging times, businesses should adapt their organisation’s culture to ensure transformation is at its centre.

This culture should be rooted in maintaining openness, empowering employees, and instilling a sense of authority and responsibility in employees, driving them to be more proactive and enterprising.

By continuously sharing information and fostering a transparent decision-making process, leaders can create trust and accountability. This can increase employee satisfaction and improve the overall productivity and performance of enterprises.

Employees are one of the most important stakeholders for businesses and their contributions must be valued and recognised

The hybrid workforce imperative 

As the world starts returning to normal after an unprecedented year, not everything will go back to business as usual. Organisations that were once all-in on the in-office experience are recognising the inherent value of a hybrid workforce.

At the core of this value is an increase in flexibility; rather than force employees to come into the office, employers are giving employees the flexibility to choose whether they work in the office, remotely, or a combination of the two.

According to a recent research survey in the UAE, 80 percent of surveyed UAE employees would like to have the option to work from home moving forward. Additionally, a similar survey revealed that 65 percent of respondents in the UAE were eager to return to offices, indicating that hybrid working is a suitable alternative for many enterprises today.

Additionally, business leaders should also develop hybrid-first management skills. Managing in a decentralised environment requires a different set of skills than managing a centralised workforce.

Managers who will help their organisations succeed in the future will know how to get the best efforts from each team member regardless of their work location while also creating a sense of belonging. Leading with empathy, they will need to provide clarity, empowerment, opportunity, challenge, and development to all team members.

Businesses must adopt disruption internally as part of their values to adapt to the dynamic business landscape

Applying lessons learned 

We must build organisations around a hybrid workforce where employees feel empowered to decide where, when, and how they work, and are evaluated by the results they deliver.

Thus, we must simultaneously offer flexible and highly customised workspaces to enable the modern workforce, embracing technologies like video communications, virtual receptionists, and conference rooms with purpose-built hardware to meet the needs of a hybrid work environment.

However, creating flexible workspaces and implementing effective technologies won’t be enough, as business leaders must also provide support and leadership to both in-office and remote workers as well.

Creating guidelines and an effective workspace for your hybrid workforce will provide a framework to support their work, which ensures consistency, promotes collaboration, and drives productivity across both in-office and remote workers.

As businesses navigate the changing business situations in the past few months, many are realising that to succeed in these changing times, businesses must adopt disruption internally as part of their values to adapt to the dynamic business landscape.

Change creates opportunities for growth. By embedding disruption deeply into your strategy, leadership, and culture, your organisation can grow exponentially during this time.

Uncertainty can become agility, future-proofing businesses to thrive when taking on any new challenges still ahead.