Have you ever imagine, the world is a place where almost all the human population on the earth has to be stuck in their homes. In fact, there is no need to imagine such a case since it is today’s reality. I think, we realized that the world is not as big as we thought before. Anyway, we shouldn’t want to lose today’s topic, so let’s talk a little bit about the online business.
Throughout the pandemic period, every company is no doubt affected, for better or worse. Some sectors have grown at a breakneck speed in the last couple of months or so such as e-commerce. However, others could barely survive in the, so-called, “new normal”. There is no doubt that the business world has undergone a big digital transformation. However, the question is what are the significant key points we need to focus on as a member of the new online business world. Through time, we only looked at the success stories but not questioned the failure ones. The topic of this blog is to give you an idea about how to run an effective online business at an organizational level in the post-pandemic world.
Tip #1: Do Not Stick To Conventional Rules
Problem1: Working Hours in Online Workplace
The mentality of working 8 consecutive hours in a day is outdated anymore. Plenty of studies have shown that the human body is unable to be proactive for 8 consecutive hours. Hence, the level of productivity of an average employee is limited to 6 hours maximum.
Problem2: Monitoring Issues for Online Businesses
Managers try to adapt the traditional business model into a new online setting, but they are in trouble with monitoring the activities of employees throughout the day. So, they generally find the idea of making too many virtual meetings in a day, is one of the sensible solutions. However, many findings have illustrated that 42% of employees are distracted by too many virtual meetings which cause productivity loss for a company.
In a nutshell, as the number of working hours increases, the level of productivity of an average employee decreases. Plus, in the online business model, it is hard to keep track of employee activities on a daily basis. So, monitoring and intense working hours are the fundamental issues that online businesses’ come across.
Solution:
The new concept of “flexible working hours” is niche and quite promising for online businesses. With the new concept, employees can arrange their programs to work at their most productive times. Rather than focusing on the number of working hours, efficient working brings success for a company. Plus, the problem of monitoring employees and pushing them to attend plenty of virtual meetings can also be solved, with the help of a flexible working hour model. Do not put time restrictions, such as 8 a.m.-5 p.m. working, give your employees freedom to manage their own work, but make sure that all the works are getting progress.
Here is the life vest for online businesses. Task management programs are specifically designed to manage all the workflow of your operations through one screen. Besides the flexible working model, the programs make it easy to monitor all the activities from one hand. For instance, with the help of task management programs, it is easy to check out the processes of a specific task with the Kanban view. You can get notifications about task assignments, progress changes, overdue tasks, sub-tasks, and many more.
In a nutshell, you can give your employees the freedom to work at their most productive time while monitoring all the business activities through one simple screen. To get more information you can follow the link.
Tip #2: Foster and Consolidate Your Corporate Culture
The online business model comes with some negatives sides as well, like the disruption of organizational culture, loss of employee attachment and engagement. Remote working alleviates the sense of company attachment and employee engagement as people become distanced from their work environment.
When we look at the manager side, disruption and distraction should be taken into account. Reason number one; monitoring and working-hour problems are the fundamental causes of employee distraction in online businesses. Reason number two; employee attachment and engagement are the cornerstones of the company culture. The lack of these stones causes the company culture to be disrupted.
I mentioned the task management programs and what these programs provide for monitoring in tip #1. However, the programs have plenty more features that solve different needs of organizations as well.
To build vibrant online business culture, task management programs provide communication and collaboration support for teams, departments, the company even clients. Your teams can collaborate by sharing files, sending messages in personal or group chat. Also, groups can be forms among teams, departments, and the company as a whole for transparent information flow. Plus, your teams can share projects, tasks, and files with your clients at any time to notify them about any changes. Besides, the programs have integrations with other widely used collaboration applications as well such as Slack and Google Drive. To form a solid online company culture, task management programs enable companies to consolidate their communication and collaboration mechanisms with their agile systems.
Tip #3: Embrace Forward-Looking Leadership
Covid-19 has changed the way we live, think and work. We felt the digital transformation to our bones within months and it was never-before-seen. The priorities, expectations, desires may have changed but what hasn't changed is demand. The demand always is there until human extinction. However, we cannot say the same for the other side of the equation which is supply. (Don’t worry, I will not go into the calculation and try to find out the equilibrium.) Regardless of B2C or B2B, businesses have definitely undergone a drastic alteration. The ones that internalized this permanent change first mitigated the damages and risks then turned it to their advantage. Internalization starts with a change in organization structure and strategy. Therefore, tip #3 is embracing forward-looking leadership.
We started from the general which is business. Now, we are discussing the importance of leadership to manage an effective online business. First two tips are connected to tip #3 because leadership is the base of all other activities to achieve sustainable healthy growth for your organization in the new era. Since every business has its dynamic, there is no proper leadership definition. All I can say is do not resist the flow, try to make your business as adaptive as possible. Take advantage of cloud-based solutions because there are people out there who experienced similar failures before and find out some smart solutions for you. Be open to them.