Lockdown 2.0: How to Keep Your Franchise Trading
Alice Tuffery, writer
Published at 12/11/2020, Updated on 04/05/2022 , Reading time: 6 min
With many businesses still recovering from the effects of the first national lockdown, this second round of restrictions feels like a blow. As Christmas approaches and we enter the busiest time of year for many industries, there’s even more pressure to adapt your business this time. Here’s how to keep trading during lockdown 2.0.
Right now, business owners are wondering how to continue making money, how to continue serving customers and how to comply with health and safety measures whilst maintaining high performance. For most companies, there is potential for adaptation, even if it won’t provide the same level of income as pre-lockdown conditions.
The first step to take is to ask yourself: What worked in the first lockdown? Having already spent months under strict government regulations, businesses may be more equipped to manage lockdown 2.0 than they realise. By implementing or building on the measures you used during the first phase of restrictions, you can get off to a great start.
How to adapt your business in a pandemic
Every business is different in the way it operates and how it treats its customers. But here’s a broad overview of the changes bosses might be able to make in different industries in order to keep trading.
Cleaning - Offer deep cleans and sanitising services, ideally with clients in retail and healthcare.
Professional services - Adapt your offering to deliver cleaning, PPE manufacturing or technology implementation. For example, in the first lockdown, pest control company Rentokil increased its specialist disinfection team by more than 600 percent to cater to rising demand.
Beauty - Produce or sell hand sanitiser alongside your normal offering, or adjust your operations to focus on items with anti-bacterial properties.
Fashion - Manufacture or sell face masks and other PPE.
Retail - Offer ‘click and collect’ or delivery to your customers. Since the start of the pandemic, IKEA has taken this approach, providing free collection for orders over £300 and delivery to DPD pick-up points from £2. You could even introduce a booking system; Marks & Spencer has launched ‘Book & Shop’, which allows customers to reserve a timeslot and avoid queueing outside the store.
Food - Take advantage of local delivery services like Deliveroo and JustEat; you may even be able to cater to more people than when you offered in-house dining.
Fitness - Offer virtual classes and online health consultations either with a paid subscription service or free of charge as a little gift to customers.
Live entertainment - Stream performances and talks on the internet. During the first lockdown, the Royal National Theatre in London proved the popularity of this approach with its series of live-streamed stage shows.
Manufacturing - Create the products in high demand, such as anti-bacterial lotion and PPE. For instance, Fiat is making face masks in China, BrewDog is producing sanitiser for the NHS and LVMH, the company behind Dior and Louis Vuitton, is creating hospital sanitiser.
Technology - Work in automation to help find solutions to current issues. In China, organisations have successfully implemented the use of drones to disinfect public spaces and deliver Covid-19 testing kits. Robots have provided hospital patients with food and drinks, taken their temperature and even cleaned their rooms (Jo Scarlett, PA Consulting).
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Extra measures
What else can we do to combat business closures whilst maintaining safety measures? Here are a few more ways you can keep trading during lockdown 2.0.
Support your staff with furlough payments. The government has extended its Job Retention Scheme until March (at the time of writing) to help employers retain their employees. If you’re eligible and haven’t already taken advantage of it, don’t delay. Even huge corporations are on board; JD Wetherspoon has transferred around 40,000 workers onto the wage support scheme, and Pure Gym has put roughly 2,500 employees on furlough. You can find out more about the government support on offer at Lockdown 2.0: What Do New Covid-19 Government Regulations Mean For Your Business?
Ramp up security measures. If you run an ‘essential’ shop, consider hiring security professionals to monitor activity inside and introduce additional hand sanitiser points. For example, Asda has hired marshals, added an extra 700 sanitising stations across its store entrances and applied protective anti-microbial coating to its trolleys.
Improve your tech options with a managed service provider. Computer problems affect even the savviest workers, and they can worsen significantly if employees live in remote areas or suffer with a weak Wi-Fi connection. By getting help from a managed service provider, you make sure your team has everything they need to work productively; some offer support with software, hardware and cyber security.
Stay up to date with industry news. Rules and regulations are changing quickly and, with them, new support schemes are being introduced regularly to help guide businesses through lockdown 2.0. You can make sure you’re doing everything you can and taking advantage of all the support mechanisms out there to protect your franchise and your employees by staying up to date. The BBC and the World Health Organisations are great places to start.
>> Read more:
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Be there for your staff. Although we’ve been geographically far apart, many of us have become emotionally closer to our employees during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Through video calls, we’ve seen each other’s homes and met their families and pets. As Christmas approaches, lots of people will be feeling more anxious than before, so now is the time to really show you care about your staff. Keep them updated on any business or industry changes and demonstrate compassion in your communications.
Stay in touch with customers. While you might feel more detached than ever from your customers, it’s vital you keep up communication. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are ideal for interacting with consumers. Don’t forget, they’ll probably be just as concerned for the future as you are, so why not lighten the mood with your content? You could create competitions, tutorials or behind-the-scenes videos. Some car dealerships have given the NHS and other voluntary groups access to their demonstration vehicles.
Stay informed during lockdown 2.0
Here at Point Franchise, we’ve been working hard to create a wide range of helpful business guides for franchises and independent start-ups navigating the Covid-19 pandemic. View our full catalogue of articles or use the search box to find details about a certain topic.
If you’d like to find out more about how to keep trading and avoid business closures during lockdown 2.0, see our guides below.
Alice Tuffery, writer