Navigating your business and team through tough times.
Quick Clips
• The best time to make strategic decisions is before you are forced to make them.
• When times are tough, leaders can become so focused on operational recovery that they overlook the needs and individual struggles of their team members.
• Only 26% of small businesses have disaster plans, though 94% believe that they are prepared.
When tough times strike, not every business is as ready to endure as the next one. And the stakes are high. Rob Glenn, vice president of global resilience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, cites research that 1 in 4 small businesses are just one disaster away from closing permanently.
“A resilient business is one that can adapt and thrive in the face of challenges and disruptions,” he said. “It means having the ability to quickly recover from setbacks, whether they are economic shifts, natural disasters or other unexpected events.”
Melissa Agnes, founder and CEO of the Crisis Ready Institute, said a resilient business does not merely stay afloat or get back to normal after tough times. Instead, they use the challenges they face as a catalyst for strengthening trust, loyalty and connection.
“True resilience is when a business emerges not only operationally intact but with stronger relationships, both internally and externally,” Agnes said. “That’s when you know resilience has been built into the culture, not just the crisis plan.”
Recent high-profile natural disasters such as Hurricane Helene and the Los Angeles wildfires have again placed a spotlight on how businesses such as car washes navigate severe, sometimes overwhelming challenges – and the importance of their recovery. In fact, Glenn said communities cannot fully recover from a disaster until there is a resumption of commerce – “and the resilience of small businesses is key to this effort.”
Experts provided some basics on facing down tough times.
PUT YOUR TEAM FIRST
JT Thomson, chief development officer and president of LUV Car Wash, said LUV was fortunate that the January wildfires in the Los Angeles remained south of its washes in the area, though the environmental impact with poor air quality and the general disruption in the region – including regular power outages and a water outage – created a number of operational challenges. Several employees who lived to the south of LUV’s locations were unable to make it to work because they were cut off by the fires.
Thomson said the company’s first priority was making sure its employees remained safe. As part of putting employees’ safety first, Thomson said it was important to establish a clear process for communicating in emergencies with team members and to make sure that managers had “the green light” to shut down if their location was threatened by the spreading fires.
“It was moving very rapidly and could change at a moment’s notice, so we were watching everything very closely,” Thomson said. “We kept a really tight line of communications open. Our district manager in the area was really focused on the fire and being ready to evacuate if we needed to.”
Agnes said when leaders support their teams during high-stakes situations, it has positive ripple effects on morale, performance and trust. When times are tough, leaders can become so focused on operational recovery that they overlook the needs and individual struggles of their team members.
“But the truth is — if your team is struggling internally, you’re not fully operational, no matter what your spreadsheets say,” Agnes said. “Human beings need physical, psychological, emotional and energetic safety to function well, especially in crisis.”
Jennifer Rogers, culture manager at Tidal Wave Auto Spa, said it is important to show team members that their employer cares about them in dire moments.
“We are in the people business and our people are our priority,” Rogers said.
Gordon Love, owner of Luv-A-Wash in Naples, Fla., said he makes it a priority to pay staff during closures.
“When there is a storm or any kind of disaster, we all incur additional costs, whether it’s child care because their kids are not in school or taking in family members or something else. We’ve always felt that that was a really big burden on our staff, and they can’t afford for us to take their pay from them,” Love said.
After a storm hits and it is time to reopen, Love said Luv-A-Wash does not push staff to return who are not ready, and staffing might initially be limited. With that approach, he said it is important to focus on messaging to customers so that they recognize the situation.
“Most are going to be understanding, though some will be irrational about it,” Love said.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Sara White, director of field marketing for Zips Car Wash, said ZIPS’ HR representatives checked on every employee of its eight locations in the impacted area to make sure they were OK. White said ZIPS team members were paid for full shifts while their locations were closed, and local ZIPS leaders ensured that the company’s HR team knew about any team members who were struggling or had specific needs so that they could step forward to support them.
“The needs and the well-being of those team members were our top priority and concern,” White said. “We had several people who had lost homes and cars – most of their material possessions. Most everyone was out of power and running water. So figuring out what our people needed was very important.”
This is an excerpt of an article from CAR WASH Magazine.
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