By Michael Briggin
More stories continue to hit the headlines over office vacancies in cities like San Francisco as well as parts of Silicon Valley. Although there are plenty of organizations that still use offices, costs are still factoring into operations with inflation and remote work transformation being paid attention to more closely.
Before you consider making changes in your operations, look at weighing the following factors:
Inflation
Originally during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2021 organizations were planning for growth more aggressively only to find inflation coming to haunt them later on. With mass layoffs and pullback on hiring plans, it’s clear that dealing with high inflation is a daunting task for executives.
When being faced with a complicated environment and inflation being a factor, it’s best to err on the side of caution when making investments. How your organization is affected by inflation is different than how it’s affecting your customers. Cutting costs is an essential way to keep the budget under control but it shouldn’t have to be the only avenue to consider.
If you’re making internal plans to improve operations, being more selective in hiring and scaling up in your organization’s departments can be an effective way to reduce risk.
Remote Work Environment
Companies such as Docusign, GitHub and Salesforce continue to shed office space where there’s subleases or even plans to transition to a fully virtual work environment. While these developments continue to be ongoing and have been trends for months, that doesn’t mean your organization should immediately follow the same exact path.
Instead, think about what a remote work component would mean for your organization’s productivity? Do you need a hybrid model? Would fully-remote make more sense? Or are neither even feasible for your current work environment?
Every organization serves a different customer base and follows through different processes, particularly when it comes to customer service. As long as communication and organization are not a problem, then your work environment should be more productive.
Customers
Although there are signs inflation is dropping, that doesn’t necessarily mean customers are going to jump to purchase your products right away if they don’t find the prices right. The value of your product may be one thing but if pricing remains to be a litmus test for your customers in the end, then you’ll need to be ready.
If you’re looking for more ways to serve customers when they are sensitive to higher prices in a lot of what they purchase, being creative and flexible with price offerings, discounts and subscriptions goes a long way at maintaining relations with them. This includes examining how subscription offerings affect your customers and being mindful of price sensitivity.
