Thanks to the position I hold, and the line of work I am in, I am fortunate to have access to some brilliant people. People that share their ideas and their current initiatives with me, their plans for the future and their concerns and risk management strategies.

I am referring to the large number of senior HR Professionals and Directors that I am fortunate enough to call clients, associates, colleagues and our wider network. Senior professionals are often privy to all aspects of organisations, as there is not a single aspect of any organisation that does not, in some way, involve people. Hence they are fantastic sources of information for how companies are dealing with big issues.

Here is what I have learned over the past couple of months…

I obviously cannot reveal any names or companies, and I cannot share privileged information, but what I can do is tell you about the companies that are doing well and those that are yet to get a full handle on things seemingly.

Systematically, I have spoken to people in our network over the past couple of months to ‘take the temperature’ of what is happening out there, for both business purposes and out of rabid curiosity. I am finding companies at three distinctly different temperatures:

• Cold: It looks like there are two scenarios here. Some companies have either gone to ground, furloughed everyone (usually out of necessity), and are trying to become as small as possible to weather the storm, then grow rapidly again once things return to normal. While others in this category are just carrying on and hoping that it passes soon so that their ways of working will remain unchanged and results will improve.
  
  
• Warm: Do what they have to do financially and for immediate operational reasons, but above all of that are experimenting with new business models, ways of working, innovation, predicting what the future may look like and what will be required by their customers. 
  
  
• Hot: Either busy because their product or service is in high demand with lower staffing or busy because they are refusing to adapt quickly enough to new ways of working, preferring again to hold out hope that when this passes the world may well look the same.

Where are you and your company right now? 
What category would you say you were in?

Who knows who will be right, there are pros and cons to all three models, but certainly, I think bigger risks are involved in the first and third models, or at least risk being more likely.

In my opinion, we should all need to be adapting quickly and making rational judgements as to how the world will change following this pandemic including the people in it, many of whom are customers and clients.

What conversations are you having internally?
What do you plan to change and what do you plan to keep?