As economies reopen after forced shutdowns caused by COVID-19, managers around the world are faced with a dual challenge: keep the workforce safe while preserving business viability in an evolving and volatile market. How should businesses start to design their “new normal” at this time of heightened uncertainty?
While we are still far from knowing what constitutes a “best practice,” there is already a great deal of experimentation emerging globally. To provide an early report of these emerging approaches, over the past month, we (virtually) talked with more than 50 “resilient” businesses across a variety of countries and sectors.
The results of this exploration show that managers are trying to ensure safety and maintain profitability with tremendous energy and creativity. While specific tactics vary by company, they share common underlying principles:
Businesses try to learn from noisy signals and quickly adapt their activities to newly emerging information.
They actively cooperate with external stakeholders (including, in some instances, their competitors) to pool and disseminate information and safeguard the stability of their ecosystem.
They rapidly adapt and sometimes shift their value proposition to reflect ever-evolving demand conditions and discover new growth opportunities.
They adapt their approach toward HR management to preserve business viability while maintaining employees’ safety and well-being.
They support all these activities through a conscious and proactive effort to be as effective and clear as possible in their communication to both internal and external stakeholders.
Importantly, a vast majority of the initiatives that companies in our sample are implementing do not require large capital investments or radical innovation. Rather, they are based on intangible capabilities, such as the ability to assess the value of the knowledge and skills that are already present within the firm and in some instances within its broader ecosystem; to rapidly understand how to redeploy them in new activities; and to establish new routines and norms of behavior that make this redeployment feasible and sustainable over time.
A vast majority of the initiatives that companies are implementing do not require large capital investments or radical innovation.
How companies are responding
This thoroughness and creativity offer hope that some of the activities that our resilient sample of firms is undertaking can be repeated by other businesses to overcome the profound business challenges posed by the pandemic.
1. Learn and quickly adapt in uncertain times
The COVID-19 crisis has forced society to confront an unprecedented level of uncertainty. At the start of the pandemic, the uncertainty primarily concerned health issues—the diffusion of the virus and its effective threat. As the virus expanded from China to other countries, the uncertainty extended to the economic domain. For example, which businesses had to close and which could be considered essential? How could employees’ safety be guaranteed? And, most recently, how can businesses preserve financial viability in the face of rapidly declining demand for products and services?
The experiences we collected show that, for many businesses, learning in the midst of uncertainty and rapidly leveraging new ways of doing things, both from an operational and commercial standpoint, quickly became a number one priority.
Keeping up to date with the latest governmental information was a useful starting point for many, but it wasn’t enough to generate actionable learning. Many firms found valuable information from other sources.
Firms with business partners or suppliers in China, for example, tried to distill the noisy signals emerging from these areas as quickly as possible to plan for safety in their plants. This allowed them to resume operations faster than others. Similarly, other multinationals immediately detected new operational and commercial approaches across their international branches and standardized and distributed them to subsidiaries.
This proactive behavior toward information was not limited to large multinationals. Smaller firms tried to overcome the pervasive uncertainty created by COVID-19 in other ways, for example nurturing the relationship with other firms in their networks or establishing new connections that could lead to new learnings.
Other firms, and especially businesses located in weak institutional contexts, took a step further to proactively reduce the uncertainty for themselves and their ecosystems by preempting the effects of COVID-19 even before contagion arrived in their countries. Faced with the emergence of conflicting safety protocols across the regions where they operated, companies worked together to design new sectoral protocols, often unilaterally deciding to adopt the most restrictive version of the protocols to reassure their employees. And, to limit the threat of future possible liabilities, they worked hard to make sure that protocols were effectively implemented, such as introducing new monitoring and tracking systems of adherence.
Case 1: Learn and deploy new information
Geographic diversification is often seen by managers as a useful way to tap into new sources of growth. In case of a pandemic, a specific form of geographic diversification—namely, having a significant presence in China—had an additional informational benefit, allowing firms to fully grasp the magnitude of the pandemic in its early days, when exact information on COVID-19 was still scarce.
This was the case of VacuumCo, a German company with over 3,500 employees across Germany, China, and other European countries, focused on producing vacuum pumps and systems. Its Chinese team was the first to live through the effects of the new pandemic and the restrictions imposed by the government. Learning from its subsidiary in China gave the company tremendous advantages. First, it enabled the creation of common safety guidelines for other countries outside China such as Germany and Sweden before local contagion even started, allowing precious time to acquire personal protective equipment before it became scarce. Second, since the company was able to foresee large disruptions in its supply chain, it started stockpiling inventory in February, which helped it operate in the critical weeks of March with limited problems. Third, by continuously and effectively sharing the learnings emerging from the Chinese subsidiary when the knowledge on the new virus was very limited outside of China, the company was able to maintain in the rest of the world when others were struggling.
Case 2: Shape the uncertainty
TurningCo, an Italian company focused on high-precision manufacturing, came in contact with COVID-19 early on in the pandemic when an employee became one of the first cases of community transmission of the virus. The company immediately reacted to this news by creating a “COVID committee” to manage the emergency even before the national lockdown was imposed. It shifted to remote working wherever possible, including employees in production and quality controls—functions where remote work posed significant logistical and operational challenges. It provided employees with tools and equipment to set up their workstation at home. The company proactively managed uncertainty with clients. Instead of passively waiting for demand to change, it tried to anticipate its evolution by refocusing all its functions toward a client-centric approach. It intensified virtual interactions with customers, merged sales and customer service, and boosted integration of all databases, which had been spread across functions, into a single customer resource management tool available to everyone to help planning and make supply chain decisions more quickly and reliably.
Case 3: Preempt the threats
Brazil Energy Biomass is an energy producer, generating steam from biomass and selling the energy to industrial clients in take-or-pay contracts. The company has two plants in Brazil, employing approximately 180 people. Operations revolve around the production, supply, maintenance and logistics for energy. Brazil Energy Biomass started planning for COVID-19 safety protocols before the country was caught in the first wave of the pandemic. For the directors, it was a “natural instinctive force” to develop protocols based on World Health Organization recommendations when the crisis was still far away. The protocols were ready within two weeks. By mid-March, the implementation was monitored on a daily basis by a crisis committee.
Key learnings
We can derive three broad ideas related to learning in uncertain environments from these narratives
A common feature of all resilient businesses we interviewed is that they proactively sought information from a variety of sources, including suppliers, trade associations, and health care professionals.
Managers readily redeployed new information they received, for example quickly establishing or revising their safety protocols or preemptively stacking inventory. Adaptation sometimes meant being able to strike a fine balance between leveraging existing capabilities and finding innovative ways to integrate old processes with new measures, such as innovatively
In some extreme cases, managers were able to preempt the threats of COVID-19 by interpreting and acting upon imperfect information before their governments did so.
2. Protect and sustain your ecosystem
Companies live in the same ecosystems as their suppliers, clients, and competitors. All of them now sail in uncharted waters, with asymmetric and unpredictable shocks hitting throughout the value chain. In such an interconnected and uncertain world, entire production networks are at risk of disappearing.
Many companies interviewed in our project took extreme measures to protect their supply chain. Information again played a central role: many firms proactively shared new safety protocols, gave feedback to each other, and worked hard to make their industry safer. These interactions involved not only suppliers and clients, but sometimes even competitors. In a “new normal” in which ensuring business safety is not an option, this process helped companies share implementation costs and leverage each other’s competencies to discover new ways of doing things.
Some companies took more extreme measures to support their ecosystem, for example sustaining suppliers’ liquidity by postponing payments due and providing personal protection equipment (PPE) to suppliers and contractors. In some cases, risk-sharing practices meant sharing workers with other businesses so companies experiencing a downturn could help businesses with a temporary spike in demand, such as supporting a grocery delivery operator.
In such an interconnected and uncertain world, entire production networks are at risk of disappearing.
Case 1: Involve clients and business associations to develop new standards
TurkFurnit, a professional furniture producer based in Turkey with more than 500 employees, supplies products for workspaces, airports, health care, education, auditoriums, and conferences. During the pandemic, the company decided to leverage its network of clients to collectively understand how to face the crisis. In collaboration with the HR association of Turkey, it formed a group involving private companies, NGOs, and business associations in order to understand the challenges from multiple perspectives: psychology, sociology, law, and insurance. The group used these insights to create an open-source online guidebook. TurkFurnit translated its rapidly accumulating knowledge into concrete innovative solutions such as the construction of mobile COVID test units with medical teams, which have so far tested over 60,000 people. The design was donated to 10 hospitals and is now also available for free online.
Case 2: Leverage and protect your clients
ITCleaning is an Italian cleaning services and waste management company. Since most of its employees are based at the clients’ locations, ITCleaning had to quickly find an effective way to coordinate its own safety standards with those of the clients. The company first decided to ask for the protocols put in place by its clients to use them as a benchmark and eventually create its own protocols. Second, it decided to ensure the use of effective safety practices by creating a simple principle: the clients’ protocols could not be less stringent than what was required by ITCleaning’s own regulation.
Case 3: Support your distributed salesforce
A large international cosmetic manufacturer based in France decided to support its 100,000+ clients—salons—across Western Europe to help them survive through the first phases of the COVID-19 crisis. The support included financial, operational, HR, and even administrative matters. The company froze all payments to support clients’ liquidity; helped salons apply to crisis relief funding such as unemployment support and rent postponement; hired consultants to create guidelines for safety measures in the salons, and shared them with each country’s hairdressers’ association; provided salons with PPE; and switched from in-person to online training.
Case 4: Partner with other businesses to share labor
ChiSuper is a supermarket chain with more than 1,000 stores across China. ChiSuper faced a severe labor shortage at a peak in the COVID-19 crisis due to China’s large number of quarantined workers and the simultaneous increase in demand for home deliveries, which raised the need for operators in stores. The company worked with catering and cooking associations, whose operations were temporarily closed, to share labor. Instead of staying at home, food service employees could decide to work for ChiSuper and return to their original employers with three-day’s notice. At one point during the pandemic, ChiSuper had more than 1,000 employees from catering companies who were allocated to different units such as logistic centers, food processing plants, and supermarkets.
Key learnings
The companies spent time talking with other companies, clients, and suppliers to understand their needs.
They proactively strengthened their supply chain by sharing information and best practices, and helping suppliers and customers financially when possible.
In some exceptional circumstances, companies actively collaborated with their suppliers, clients, and competitors to preserve the stability of the ecosystem by providing financial, operational, and administrative support, and sometimes actively sharing resources.
3. Change your value proposition
Since the beginning of the virus outbreak, entire sectors have experienced sudden and dramatic drops in demand. Several businesses actively adapted their value proposition to face these challenges. They questioned the value they provided to clients in the new circumstances and changed some of their activities to respond to emerging customer needs. For some businesses, the impetus for change enabled them to discover unmet demand within their customer segments, or even entirely new customer segments with potential for growth.
Case 1: Adapt to customers’ needs
Logistics Co is a major player in the logistics and distribution business, providing business clients with supply chain solutions. With five distribution centers and three logistics warehouses, and over 1,000 employees, Logistics previously managed more than 50 outbound orders per day to refill stores and retail locations for its main clients. Almost all its clients were heavily impacted by the imposed closure of most of the stores and shopping malls who had to quickly reroute their business toward e-commerce and direct delivery of products to customers’ homes. This shift heavily impacted Logistics operations, increasing outbound orders from 50 per day to 1,200–1,500 per day. The company decided to reallocate most of its employees from temporarily locked-down activities to the inbound logistics and internal order handling. To sustain the radical change of operations and deliver on the huge spike in orders, the company hired a subcontractor to manage last-mile delivery. Logistics Co managed to serve clients profitably, transferring most of the additional costs and getting a bump for improved service-level agreements and number of orders managed similar to the one they usually get during peak times like Black Friday. Once the lockdown was partially lifted, more traditional B2B operations resumed to restock clients’ stores, although a significant number of B2C orders are still required by its clients.
Case 2: Process innovation
Faced with a sudden surge in home delivery orders, ChiSuper created thousands of self-pick-up stations across China, based at community centers or local convenience stores, whose owners received incentives per order. This increased job efficiency by two or three times, as delivery moved from door-to-door to the pick-up station. Meanwhile, the work to pick and pack items also doubled, so ChiSuper redeployed some store employees to help. To further improve efficiency, the number of stock-keeping units were reduced from about 4,000 to 1,000+, and offered special packages that included vegetables, fruit, meat, and medicine to accelerate sorting and delivery.
Case 3: Product innovation
Canteen Software Co is a small Italian IT company offering dedicated software solutions to support operations of large caterers serving schools, hospitals, and corporate, public sector and military institutions. With around 20 employees located between Italy and Poland, the company was severely impacted by COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the Italian government, which included the closure of schools and offices and strict safety regulations for the reopening phase such as increased distance between tables and seats and capacity reduction. Canteen’s CEO decided to use the time to implement a long-postponed training on cloud technologies and to complete existing development projects. In a few weeks, the company developed a new product to help restaurants manage increasing delivery and take-away demand sparked by the pandemic. The new product included, for example, the management of online reservations, orders, and digital payments. The company started by offering the new product to their existing clients and eventually expanded its focus to new clients such as small bars and restaurants. The product will be offered for free for 2020, and interested clients will be able to sign a licensing contract after 2020.
Key learnings
The companies did not shy away from questioning how the pandemic affected the value they provided to their customers.
This reflection led some companies to innovate, both in terms of their process and product, to continue creating value under new circumstances.
By paying attention to new customer needs caused by the pandemic, some businesses were able to spot and develop new opportunities.
4. Adapt your HR management
The coronavirus pandemic has put traditional human resources management practices under extreme pressure. In companies that could move their operations online, face-to-face collaborations had to be rapidly replaced with e-mail and videoconferencing, forcing businesses to adopt an entirely new model of work within a matter of days. For companies that could not shift their workforce online, the challenge was to adapt production teams to new social distancing requirements.
Managers in our sample have worked hard to keep workers productive, motivated, engaged, and connected through concerted actions. To compensate for the stress caused by remote working, several companies introduced flexible schedules to allow balancing teamwork and uninterrupted individual work with structured rotations to break possible “virtual” silos within the organization. In companies that had to maintain physical presence in the plant, we have seen the emergence of new staffing and rotation practices as precautionary measures against contagion, as well as new ways to preserve operational continuity across more shifts.
Several companies have also reacted to the crisis by working hard to retain their talent, for example reallocating employees to different tasks. This required understanding the skills of people employed in areas that were experiencing low workloads, such as door-to-door salespeople, and the ability to move them toward newly designed roles in which these skills could be useful during lockdowns, such as online marketing. For some firms, the forced work-from-home period has also been an opportunity to upskill employees, for example committing part of employees’ time to online courses or exploring new training methods such as role plays between employees to introduce safety protocols.
Overall, a common theme emerging from our interviews is the attempt to deliver a highly individualized HR management approach to support employees as they adjusted to completely new work and personal situations, in part also to motivate them to adapt to new safety practices. Implementing this model of HR management requires new capabilities such as mapping employees’ skills, cataloging competencies, supporting rapid reallocation of people across tasks, and revising schedules and team structures. More important, it requires the will to provide concrete support to employees’ material and mental wellbeing.
Case 1: Support employee adjustments to remote working
For many companies, remote work was a complete novelty prior to the pandemic. This was the case for Number1 Bank, a full service commercial bank with 4,500 branches across India. Pre-COVID, the bank had no organizational or technological measures in place to enable work from remote locations. Only 30 to 40 users (mostly senior managers) had access to the bank’s virtual private network (VPN), which allowed secure remote working. In about four weeks, the bank had put in place VPN access for 9,000 people and provided a secure customer relationship app for sales and service people. This transition was not just technological; the bank also introduced many new HR management practices to support the shift to remote, support employee morale, and make sure that everyone felt secure. Senior management communicated that nobody would be laid off and deferred their variable pay on a voluntary basis. A large round of promotions was announced at the end of April, which further boosted morale. Finally, the company provided clear guidelines to help employees work from home, including planning their work, being on time, not dropping in for a conversation unannounced, and taking a day off if needed. The bank also introduced a number of practices to promote well-being and work-life balance, such as Silent Hour—a daily hour of dial out time for all employees, to be devoted to lunch or any other personal activity—and online programs on mindfulness, yoga, and positive psychology. The bank is also monitoring the mood of people on a daily basis through an employee app to fine tune the arrangements as they move forward.
Case 2: Implement new staffing and rotation models
PetFoodCo, a German producer of pet food, was considered an essential business and was allowed to continue operating throughout the COVID-19 crisis. The demand for its product peaked in March and April 2020, and the company had to quickly implement safety and social distancing measures to keep the operations running and their employees safe. In addition to the use of PPE and temperature checks, PetFoodCo applied social distancing by parceling production workers into small teams that could run a production line by themselves. The teams were built around “critical workers,” employees who were essential to manage the production facility. Activities and schedules were organized so that two critical workers never interacted with each other under any circumstances. This strict segregation ensured that the company could maintain business continuity even in case of a contagion, and also increased the reliance on individual team members for psychological concerns regarding safety, pre-existing conditions, and family needs related to children. Management decided to delegate decisions on individual schedules to the lowest possible level in the organization so that personal circumstances could be more visible and more effectively addressed. This shift was challenging but helped the company be more responsive to employees’ well-being and ultimately led to greater efficiency.
Case 3: New training and compliance models
TurkHotels is a Turkish chain of mid-sized hotels with 217 employees across four sites. In mid-March, the founding partners decided to voluntarily stop operations to guarantee employee health and safety. The company is doing scenario-based training to prepare reopening, such as screening entering customers with temperature checks, taking their pictures, and having them sign a waiver. Employees use a simulation to practice enforcing the protocols at peak times. Another scenario helps them manage noncompliant customers. Even the richest and most famous clients will see that the hotel makes no adjustments in safety measure compliance.
Similarly, AmberCo, a Mexican provider of catering services and food service solutions with around 380 employees, deployed a wide variety of communication tools—video capsules, emails, posters—to help employees learn new safety practices. This communication effort extends not only to clients and suppliers but to all AmberCo’s “points of contact” including food delivery transport, entry and exit of suppliers, and contact with clients. Supervisors on the ground ensure guidance and compliance. The CEO encourages managers to ask the “5 Whys” to fully drive compliance. If someone is not wearing a mask, Why are they not wearing a mask? Because they don’t think it’s important? Why not? Because they did not understand or get our message? Why not? Because we didn’t communicate properly, and so forth. “We can’t expect people to wear masks and wash their hands just because we told them to,” the CEO said. Managers are pushed to get to the bottom of the problem and identify reasons why people don’t comply—and come up with solutions.
A common theme emerging from our interviews is the attempt to deliver a highly individualized HR management approach to support employees as they adjusted to completely new work and personal situations.
Case 4: Commitment to employees’ mental well-being and fairness
Chemical and materials companies are an essential part of their customers’ supply chains. Guaranteeing business continuity has thus been the priority at ChemiCo, a multinational chemical and materials company based in Belgium with 24,500 employees. While the company kept most plants operating during the COVID-19 crisis, it also started reflecting early on about the importance of supporting the mental well-being of employees at times of heightened uncertainty and anxiety. The company launched surveys to help identify issues and prepare targeted measures. The CEO created a solidarity fund to which many leaders, as well as investors, have contributed.
Similarly, the owners and managers of PrecisionCo, an Italian company focused on producing high-precision steel components, took several actions to support the well-being of their 120 employees at the onset of the pandemic. The owners wrote a letter to employees stressing their continued support and announcing that the company was providing every employee and their family with health care coverage for COVID-related expenses and health checks. To make sure to reach everyone in the firm, including production workers who lacked company email addresses, WhatsApp groups were created. After a few weeks, PrecisionCo completed their human resources performance review and decided to triple the monetary amount of the annual productivity premium given to the highest-performing workers and instead split it equally among all employees.
Key Learnings
Many of the companies in our sample approached the challenges posed by the pandemic through a very proactive approach to HR management. They:
Used a range of levers to deliver an individualized approach to understand the circumstances of each employee and to be able to react appropriately to individual needs.
Implemented staffing, training, and compliance models to create new behaviors and mutual understandings.
Backed words with concrete actions, including the provision of home office equipment, PPE, health benefits, salary increases, and promotions.
5. Communicate and empower
Many of the approaches adopted by companies in our sample require fundamental changes in employee behavior, for example, maintaining social distancing in the workplace. Rather than attempting to fully control and micromanage their workforce, several companies try to influence and empower employee behavior by improving internal and external communication practices.
Often, the stronger emphasis on communication started from the top of the organization, with CEOs actively engaged in communication of new safety principles, the plans made to implement them, and the role that each employee had in sustaining them over time. Involvement of top executives ensured that new expected norms of behavior could reach all layers of the organization. Many CEOs decided to share not only what the management knew, but also the unknowns, based on the belief that everyone should be made aware of the challenges faced by the company and society at large. Companies also worked hard to collect feedback from employees to foster learning within the organization and empower employees to feel responsible for their own safety.
Case 1: Inclusive and bilateral communication
At ItalGlassesCo, an Italian eyewear producer, attention to employees’ personal and social well-being is one of the company’s core values. Since the early days of the crisis, the company maintained constant communication to inform, educate, and improve morale among employees. The CEO prepared multiple videos to explain what the company knew and what it did not, and what to expect for the future. The company reassured employees that it was doing whatever it could to get back to work safely, shared its detailed protocol, and provided remote training to every employee to implement it. ItalGlassesCo’s communication strategy is not unidirectional. In mid-May, the company sent a survey to all employees to get feedback on i) how they are feeling, ii) how is smart-working going and how to improve it, iii) how they are perceiving the efforts made by the company, and iv) understand their main concerns. The results of the survey will be used to plan the next phase.
Case 2: Influencing employees’ behavior outside the firm
SteelCo, an Italian producer of metal sheets, communicated to its workers that the company’s livelihood depended on their ability to take care of themselves, at work and at home. “That’s a powerful message to them. They are internalizing the message that if they get sick and lots of them get infected, they could paralyze our business, and this would eventually hurt their jobs and pockets,” the director of operations told us. They complemented this broad messaging with daily meetings before each shift focused entirely on safety protocols involving both operation managers and employees. Employees participate in monitoring and are invited to report breaches of protocols and talk about safety at their daily shift meetings. Communication intentionally involved a variety of channels to make sure everyone could be reached, including companywide messages, Zoom meetings, WhatsApp messaging, and video calls
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Case 3: Empowering employees
SiderCo, an Italian family business operating in the stainless steel industry, invested both time and capital in ensuring physical and psychological safety for employees during the pandemic. Multiple town hall meetings were held to share the company's plans for operating during the crisis, including all new safety measures. Following the decision to reopen, the company allowed each employee to decide freely whether they wanted to come back to work or continue staying at home. Every single employee agreed to the management request and went back to work. As a sign of recognition to the whole team for their commitment, management decided to pay an ad-hoc bonus to every employee.
Key Learnings
Keeping a safe and productive workforce during the pandemic requires new norms of behavior that are hard to enforce through standard contractual and monitoring solutions. Rather than micromanaging their employees, many companies tried to establish new “relational contracts”: contracts enforced by mutual, informal understandings rather than by the courts.
Improved the effectiveness and reach of their internal communication, which often directly involved the CEO to show commitment and awareness of the dramatic situation and reach all the layers of the organization.
Empowered employees to take responsibility for their own health and ultimately commit to new and different routines inside and outside the firm.
Lessons for moving forward
Nothing will be the same after the COVID-19 crisis. But, instead of being paralyzed by this thought, resilient companies all around the world are showing tremendous dynamism and willingness to embrace the challenge of making businesses stronger and safer in a sustainable way.
The managers we interviewed share a growth mindset that sees the crisis as a chance to improve. They did not trust easy fixes or look for silver bullets, but took a forward-looking approach in most areas of the business, from implementation of safety measures and the relationship with stakeholders to interpretation of clients’ new needs. This shows that a once-in-a-lifetime crisis may represent an opportunity for rejuvenating business models and introducing changes that would have otherwise taken years to happen.
Despite the differential impact COVID-19 has had on small compared to large businesses, our interviews show that creativity and innovative thinking are not necessarily a function of size or capital. Resilient businesses, small and large alike, are reacting with resourcefulness to the business challenges posed by the pandemic, mainly leveraging internal capabilities or detecting helpful local resources.
We hope that the examples illustrated in this report will inspire businesses of every size to find their own path toward increased resilience in an increasingly unpredictable world.
About the authors
Raffaella Sadun is Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
Andrea Bertoni is researcher at Ipsos MORI | London School of Economics and Political Science, and a member of the Harvard Business School MBA class of 2021.
Alexia Delfino is an applied microeconomist with interests in organizational, development, and behavioral economics.
Giovanni Fassio is a consultant for Boston Consulting Group.
Mariapaola Testa is is a member of the Harvard Business School MBA class of 2021.
The interviews
In the second half of May 2020, we conducted 56 interviews with businesses across the globe to understand changes in safety and managerial practices in the COVID-19 era. The interviews were conducted in collaboration with the Italian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises Confapi and the HBS Research Centres located in China, India, Israel, California, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and Latin and South America. Confapi and the Centres used their local knowledge to select companies that could serve as an example of resilience for other businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), on the basis of two criteria: a) the interviewees had already gone through the process of preparing and implementing changes to re-establish the company’s operations following the presumed peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and b) Confapi and the Centers knew them well (often because they had been a subject of an HBS case study in the recent past) and considered them to be exemplary organizations (in terms of productivity and profitability) prior to the pandemic. Almost all the companies contacted participated in the interviews, motivated primarily by the willingness to help other companies that were living through the crisis and to learn from other organizations.
Size of the businesses included in our sample ranged from 20 to 8,6000 employees. Twenty-four operate in manufacturing and 32 in services. In terms of geographical coverage, 17 businesses are based in Italy, seven in the United States, six in other European countries, 2 in Israel, 4 in India, 4 in China, 10 in Middle East and North Africa, and 6 in Latin and South America.
Interviews were conducted by trained interviewers, who followed a standard interview protocol, covering four main areas: effect of the COVID-19 emergency on business activities and staff, plans to reinstate activities, implementation of safety and managerial practices in the reopening phase, and key learnings from this experience. The interviews were conducted in a conversational style with business owners, CEOs, or key executives and lasted around 60 minutes.
Note from the authors
Creation of this report would not have been possible without the collaboration of the Harvard Business School Research Centers and the Italian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises Confapi. We want to thank in particular Lynn Paine and Victoria Winston (HBS) and Maurizio Casasco (Confapi), all the companies involved, and, for the implementation of interviews and selection of the participating companies: Vincent Dessain, Daniela Beyersdorfer, Emilie Billaud, Giulia Bussoletti, Elena Corsi, Federica Gabrieli, Mette Hjortshoej, Tonia Labruyere, Emer Moloney, Jan Pianca, Oksana Sichi, Emer Moloney, Thomaz Teodorovicz, Nancy Dai, Bonnie Cao, Shu Lin, Wong Adina, Billy Chan, Jingsheng Huang, Adina Wong, Rachna Tahilyani, Anjali Raina, Rachna Chawla, Kairavi Dey, Malini Sen, Shreya Ramachandran, Allison Ciechanover, Jeffrey Huizinga, Nicole Keller, Danielle Golan, Ruth Costas, Carla Larangeira, Pedro Levindo, Mariana Cal, Fernanda Miguel, Esel Çekin, Gamze Yücaoğlu, and Alper Şahin.