With the recent announcement of new and even further restrictions to tackle a resurgence of COVID-19, businesses are being asked again to rethink their plans for the next couple of months.
We are therefore delighted to announce that the Risk Dashboard’s FREE COVID-19 edition entitled – ‘Survival, Resilience and Growth’ has been endorsed by BEIS (Government dept. for Business, Energy and Industrial strategy), allowing the UK LEP’s and Growth Hubs to engage, so that our compliance software can reach as many SME’s as possible.
Over the past 8 months, many businesses have demonstrated their ability to adapt as never before. Just as we started returning to work, the Government has once again asked employees to start working from home again, wherever possible.
With more probable uncertainty looming, and Government support starting to reduce, as transitioning from one support scheme to another begins, it is vital that SME’s continue to learn from the past months and build on their survival planning and resilience thinking.
Audit reports coming from SME’s tell us where businesses have responded positively throughout the first lockdown, proving themselves to be agile and resilient. However the Risk Dashboard’s compliance software still identifies several areas where businesses need to anticipate particular challenges ahead, such as;
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- Mental Health challenges for staff working from home, in particular during the winter months, as the days grow shorter and darker and falling temperatures increasingly force us indoors.
- Ensuring that staff working from home have the right infrastructure to cope with agile working. In light of new government guidance, it might feel as if the time and money invested to make the workplace safe has been wasted. But these preparations will bear fruit.
- Who can and will be invited back into the office? Once employees can begin to come back into the office again, think about what you will use the available space for. Office capacity will be dramatically reduced because of social distancing, so plan to prioritise activities that work less well in a remote setting: onboarding, collaboration, keeping culture going
- Office space of the future is set to change dramatically. As home working becomes the norm and demand for office space reduces, businesses are now looking to reduce their property portfolio and optomise space to suit new working norms. Businesses will need to wait for breaks or expiries in their leases to release space without risk. So, for a company looking to reduce its portfolio by 25% to 40%, it could take almost three to five years for them to get there.
Andrew Leeming, Programme Manager at Boost – Lancashire’s Growth Hub said: “Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Boost has been helping businesses to improve their resilience by advising them and directing to the brilliant funded support we have available across the county”.
“The partnership with Risk Dashboard is a perfect complement to that. As businesses continue their recovery journey, this free tool will help them to instantly mitigate their risk and focus on future growth”.
“It will also help Boost to better understand in real-time the key concerns and recovery barriers of the county’s businesses so we can tailor our fully funded support to better help Lancashire.”
Neil Campbell from Risk Dashboard comments that “the real-time data that Risk Dashboard creates will help Boost understand the short-term indicators, and provide a stronger sense of the starting point in which to deliver business support locally”.
This latest FREE edition is the latest ‘stress test’ measure in a series of support solutions rolled out by Risk Dashboard to assist SMEs during the pandemic.
Risk Dashboard is easy to use, agile and dynamic, meaning that it is able to grow and develop with your post COVID-19 secure business needs.
You need to ask yourself this simple question – can I afford NOT to undertake a FREE ‘STRESS TEST’ of my business?
If you would like to download your FREE edition, developing your post COVID-19 resilience strategy for survival, please see your local Growth Hub, Accountant of Business Advisor for a FREE to use licence, or contact the Risk Dashboard using: https://www.riskdashboard.co.uk/SRG/ using voucher code: NCBN1 or contact Neil Campbell, Commercial Director at Risk Dashboard on info@riskdashboard.co.uk.
We look forward to hearing from you.