What it’s like running a business during a pandemic?

Not quite a techie blog this one, much more focus on business overall, which I thought maybe useful to our fellow businesses out there.

So, up until this point, what has been like running a business during a pandemic?

Well, it’s important to first give some context. We’re clearly not a business that was forced to shut, such as a pub, restaurant or personal care services. We’ve been “allowed” to trade and continue running the business throughout, but with the obvious restrictions in place such as working from home and during some of the lockdowns not being able to physically see customers.

The early days were a little worrying – purely because no one had any idea how it would play out. There was no guidebook or reference manual for this situation. We had to work it out, one day at a time and see what we could and couldn’t do.

Within our business, we had a surge of business when the very first lockdown was announced, as the mass rush to work from home happened. This lasted a good few weeks, and then things went very quiet. People who were working from home were set up, with some businesses on “pause” not actively working. It was a strange time.

There was that period of a good number of months when we didn’t see any customers, and internally we didn’t see each other. I’ve still only seen some of the team once, which was when we got together at Christmas (2021) for some food and drinks.

As things slowly eased, the worry’s we had gradually disappeared, as we found new ways to work (without attending site) and diverted some of the work we were used to doing onsite to remote solutions instead.

Whilst overall we saw a decline in business during the first year of the pandemic, we kept all of our team working the whole time, and we simply got on with the work that was there in front of us.

Overall, despite the worry’s and some sleepless nights, in hindsight, we’re been very fortunate and I’m grateful we’re in a sector that meant we could keep working and generating business, even if there was a little less of it.

As restrictions now end (again), we’ll be cautious and continue in the short term working how we’ve been working all along, simply because it works for us. People know where they stand and should things change in the future, we won’t have to reinvent the wheel.

The most important thing overall, everyone in the business is healthy and thankfully hasn’t any lasting health issues.

I think if I was to give some advice here for anyone reading this in the future, it would be not to overthink things and literally take one day at a time, rather than get carried away with where you might or might not be in a couple of months time.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, an IT Support business in Redditch, Worcestershire. This was perhaps the first article he’s produced without any jokes.