Covid two years on: what businesses have learnt

Com­pa­nies had to adapt quick­ly to new ways of work­ing and reach­ing cus­tomers as Boris John­son announced the first Covid lock­down. Two years on, restric­tions have only just been eased and the world is still learn­ing to live with the dis­ease.

Here, busi­ness lead­ers reflect on the chal­lenges it brought and the lessons they’ve learnt along the way.

Rebecca Passmore, UK managing director, PureGym

If you had have told me three years ago that our gyms would close for almost a year I would nev­er have believed you. In the first 13 months of the pan­dem­ic we were shut for 10 of them. Dur­ing this time we gen­er­at­ed zero rev­enue because, unlike retail and hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness­es which could turn to their online offer­ing or piv­ot to take-aways, we had to remain ful­ly closed.  

The finan­cial sit­u­a­tion was chal­leng­ing to over­come. Cost min­imi­sa­tion was our dai­ly focus and we made use of the gov­ern­ment sup­port that was avail­able to us. The most chal­leng­ing part was hav­ing to close all our gyms overnight and com­mu­ni­cat­ing this news to our col­leagues, with­out being able to say when they would reopen.  

To over­come these chal­lenges, we focused on the things that were in our con­trol. We had two key pri­or­i­ties: first, to look after our team mem­bers and sec­ond, to make our gyms Covid-safe spaces so that we were ready to re-open as soon as we got the green light. 

It was vital­ly impor­tant to main­tain mem­ber loy­al­ty over this peri­od, so we focused on improv­ing the Pur­e­Gym app. We intro­duced hun­dreds of free dig­i­tal work­outs and live-streamed work­outs on social media too. This paid div­i­dends as it helped both exist­ing mem­bers and new join­ers to keep fit and inspired dur­ing lock­downs. We also offered our gyms to be con­vert­ed into vac­cine cen­tres and our Nuneaton gym admin­is­tered more than 7,500 dos­es.     

There are some phys­i­cal things that will stay as a result of Covid, such as clean­ing and sani­tis­er facil­i­ties, and we have con­tin­ued to make our app free for every­one because it’s an effec­tive way to engage with cur­rent and poten­tial mem­bers. But we know we can’t stand still as a busi­ness and need to keep inno­vat­ing at pace. 

One of the main things we’ve tak­en on board is the way in which the busi­ness has piv­ot­ed from being known as sim­ply a gym oper­a­tor to being a health and fit­ness brand. We worked incred­i­bly hard dur­ing the pan­dem­ic to demon­strate the impor­tance of gyms for peo­ples’ men­tal and phys­i­cal health. As we expand inter­na­tion­al­ly and into new busi­ness ven­tures this posi­tion­ing will be incred­i­bly impor­tant.   

Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice, London Business School

The biggest change that has occurred over the past two years is that busi­ness­es realised they could be just as pro­duc­tive with peo­ple work­ing in new ways – many of which they had nev­er imag­ined before. It’s a very pro­found change and I don’t think com­pa­nies will go back to how they oper­at­ed before. 

Every CEO is now ask­ing them­selves whether they could do things dif­fer­ent­ly. They’re look­ing to cre­ate greater flex­i­bil­i­ty and auton­o­my for their work­force or explor­ing new ways to attract tal­ent­ed peo­ple, who are being giv­en all sorts of entic­ing offers by oth­er com­pa­nies. The pan­dem­ic has brought a mas­sive change in skills, assump­tions, habits and atti­tudes.

If it had only last­ed a week or two, I think we’d have sprung right back to how organ­i­sa­tions were run before. But, it’s been two years and peo­ple are still catch­ing Covid, so we’re not real­ly out of it (even though we like to think so). These chal­lenges are going to con­tin­ue, so it’s real­ly impor­tant that we have the chance to change how we approach work.

We’ve been work­ing in the same ways since the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, so now is the time to real­ly rethink our pri­or­i­ties and redesign work.

Nick Jones, CEO, Joules

The lev­el of dis­rup­tion and pace of change in the retail sec­tor over the past two years has been tru­ly unprece­dent­ed. Our biggest chal­lenge was the imme­di­ate impact of suc­ces­sive lock­downs on foot­fall and cus­tomer demand in our stores. We saw a sig­nif­i­cant shift to our online offer as a result, both through our own web­site and those of our part­ners, and we adapt­ed our oper­a­tions quick­ly to ensure we were able to ful­fil orders.

Part­ly due to the pan­dem­ic, the retail sec­tor has been faced with addi­tion­al chal­lenges dur­ing the past two years includ­ing sup­ply chain dis­rup­tion, freight and logis­tics issues, and infla­tion­ary pres­sures. I am incred­i­bly proud of the deci­sive­ness and speed with which the Joules team respond­ed and adapt­ed to these chal­lenges.  

In terms of the lessons I per­son­al­ly have learnt, first and fore­most is the impor­tance of our val­ues and pur­pose. Our mis­sion to bright­en our cus­tomers’ lives through our brand and prod­uct and to con­duct busi­ness in a respon­si­ble way now runs through every­thing we do. As we have faced chal­lenges over the past two years, this north star has meant that we nev­er lose sight of our long-term goals and most impor­tant­ly, what our cus­tomer wants from us. 

The open­ing of ‘The Barn’, our new head office in our home of Mar­ket Har­bor­ough, came at the per­fect time in Joules’ jour­ney too. It ful­ly sup­ports flex­i­ble and agile work­ing and is designed with inspi­ra­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion at its heart through the abun­dance of meet­ing spaces, break­out areas and open spaces for our teams to work in. It also reflects Joules’ per­son­al­i­ty, thanks to the building’s nat­ur­al sur­round­ings and the sweep­ing coun­try­side views. 

Sally Henderson, group head of talent and learning, Zurich

The pan­dem­ic accel­er­at­ed our jour­ney to flex­i­ble work­ing and cre­at­ed a more col­lab­o­ra­tive and less hier­ar­chi­cal cul­ture. Pro­tect­ing and car­ing for all of our stake­hold­ers is real­ly core to the busi­ness, and the pan­dem­ic put the spot­light on our own well­be­ing focus, as the health of our employ­ees became a pri­or­i­ty.

Our approach focused on four dif­fer­ent aspects of well­be­ing: men­tal, phys­i­cal, social, and finan­cial. That frame­work had already been defined pre-pan­dem­ic, but it brought a renewed empha­sis on cer­tain aspects of it. We want­ed to take as much anx­i­ety and stress away from our employ­ees as we pos­si­bly could, so we set up a series of edu­ca­tion pro­grammes on top­ics such as, how to cope with change or tech­niques for man­ag­ing stress, which were designed to help peo­ple deal with the chal­lenges we were all fac­ing at the time.

We also put into place a hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion ben­e­fit which pro­vid­ed finan­cial sup­port for our employ­ees and house­hold depen­dants if they were hos­pi­talised as a con­se­quence of Covid-19. In addi­tion, we offered coun­selling sup­port and employ­ee assis­tance pro­grammes, as well as more proac­tive things like walk­ing chal­lenges to encour­age peo­ple to stay fit and healthy. 

We also intro­duced fun ini­tia­tives like ‘Zurich’s Got Tal­ent’. While we were in lock­down around the globe, many peo­ple found them­selves pick­ing up new hob­bies. We looked to embrace this and encour­aged peo­ple to share their new­found skills with­in the organ­i­sa­tion. We’ve had some amaz­ing singers, dancers, cooks and artists, and it’s helped us to learn more about our col­leagues and build those social con­nec­tions. 

Despite the fact that we’re now mov­ing to a phase of liv­ing with Covid-19, we’re plan­ning to keep some of the pos­i­tive ini­tia­tives that helped to con­nect and unite us over this time. 

As a glob­al busi­ness, Covid con­tin­ues to affect many of our col­leagues in oth­er parts of the world, so we are still liv­ing through some of the chal­lenges that the pan­dem­ic brought. On an organ­i­sa­tion­al lev­el we have com­mit­ted to hybrid work­ing but how you oper­a­tional­ize these com­mon prin­ci­ples and make them work in your coun­try, based on the cur­rent con­text, dif­fers. We’re still shar­ing ideas across coun­tries and I’m sure as we evolve, we’ll con­tin­ue to learn. 

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