How COVID-19 is prompting organisations to change
No, this isn’t another blog post about the benefits of remote working.
Yes, once COVID-19 restrictions came into place, many organisations in the health and social services sectors were able to shift their teams to work from home with reasonable success.
While that’s pretty cool, remote working is just organisations catching up.
This post is about how some organisations are going even further and using COVID-19 as a prompt to reprioritise and reimagine how they work.
COVID-19 is a setting for organisational change
When things really started to ramp up back in March, the initial focus was on planning for business continuity. Most funders were asking their commissioned providers to outline how they would keep delivering services while complying with guidelines and managing infection risk.
As the months have progressed and COVID-19 has become part of the standard operating environment, organisations are now using the situation as a driver for change.
One organisation leader recently described this to us as an opportunity to embark on a change that has been on the wish list for almost a decade.
COVID-19 is creating a setting for change, allowing organisations to evolve whilst still requiring considerations to be made regarding uncertainty that is still around.
So how are organisations evolving?
Some of the examples of change projects that we’re seeing organisations undertake across the health and social services sectors include:
Going digital with community education and engagement programs
Rolling out tech-enabled services
Hitting reset on the strategic plan out of the usual 3-5 year cycle
Co-designing new service models remotely
Reviewing old service models and evaluating their value
Experimenting with new platforms that help teams collaborate
Capturing consumer/client/member experience to inform service improvement
We also think it’s worth highlighting how well many organisations have been going at ‘business as usual’ when face-to-face engagement with clients and service users is critical in so many service settings.
A time for change or a time for certainty?
With so much uncertainty around, it can be a hard pitch to get any new project off the ground. But it could be just the right environment to change how your organisation or service works.
If you’re looking for inspiration, here’s a few ways to find out where you should start:
talk to your organisation’s clients, staff and stakeholders to understand their priorities and pain points
research what’s happening in your sector—most conferences might be off, but there’s more webinars, podcasts and newsletters than ever before
maintain your professional networks—reach out to people in other organisations and pick their brain about what’s working for them
experiment and iterate—try out new ways of working or different service models and learn from what works.
While COVID-19 continues to have a negative impact on many of our colleagues, families and friends that we shouldn’t forget about, we hope it can also give organisations the nudge they need to change for the better.