Viruses, wooden pallets and whales in business – Businesses

What is fascinating about the business world is that you have to deal with very short-term worries while keeping your eyes on the long term. And while the time horizons are the same for small and large businesses, the concerns are very different …

Take the case of de-containment with the next full reopening of restaurants and other cafes. This reopening is causing a rush in demand for wooden pallets because, as you know, these pallets are used to accommodate goods or for example to install ephemeral terraces. So yes this new gold rush caused a 40% increase in the price of pallets!

In fact, wooden pallets are a bit like temporary workers, they are also a barometer of the economy. When all is well the demand for temporary workers and pallets explodes and when the economy is sluggish, demand slows down sharply. When I think of restaurateurs I am wholeheartedly with them, because not only do they have to stuff themselves with the changing government rules, cash additional costs to comply with sanitary rules, cash the increase in the price of pallets if they want to install a terrace, and chasing staff because the virus has definitively scared a good part of the hospitality staff. I remind you that the boss of the hotel group, Accor, which brings together brands such as Ibis, Mercure, Novotel and Sofitel, recently admitted that he expected 20% of his 140,000 employees to never return to work in the sector. catering and hospitality.

For their part, the largest companies have also understood that if they want to keep their employees, they must give meaning to their work. Before, we thought it was a fashionable consultant’s whim, today with massive teleworking, with confused management because the authority is less vertical, these large companies have no choice, they must give a reason to be their employees. It is essential, when an employee is alone at home, he is autonomous, he has no boss except for a few minutes by videoconference. So, if we want these employees to be aligned with the company’s philosophy, this company still has to have a real philosophy beyond, stupidly, making money. Indeed, when everyone knows in which direction to row, it is also easier to implement telework which is, let us remember, a form of remote trust. Clearly, large companies must explain more where they want to go and how to get there.

As one economist pointed out: the company of tomorrow will no longer move like a big whale but like a school of fish: everyone in the company must be able to integrate the values ​​of the company. And this is not a short-term challenge, as with the price of wooden pallets, but the main challenge for the next ten years!

Take the case of de-containment with the next full reopening of restaurants and other cafes. This reopening is causing a rush in demand for wooden pallets because, as you know, these pallets are used to accommodate goods or for example to install ephemeral terraces. So yes this new gold rush caused a 40% increase in the price of pallets! In fact, wooden pallets are a bit like temporary workers, they are also a barometer of the economy. When all is well the demand for temporary workers and pallets explodes and when the economy is sluggish, demand slows down sharply. When I think of restaurateurs I am wholeheartedly with them, because not only do they have to stuff themselves with the changing government rules, cash additional costs to comply with sanitary rules, cash the increase in the price of pallets if they want to install a terrace, and chasing staff because the virus has definitively scared a good part of the hospitality staff. I remind you that the boss of the hotel group, Accor, which brings together brands such as Ibis, Mercure, Novotel and Sofitel, recently admitted that he expected 20% of his 140,000 employees to never return to work in the sector. For their part, the largest companies have also understood that if they want to keep their employees, they must give meaning to their work. Before, we thought it was a fashionable consultant’s whim, today with massive teleworking, with confused management because the authority is less vertical, these large companies have no choice, they must give a reason to be their employees. It is essential, when an employee is alone at home, he is autonomous, he has no boss except for a few minutes by videoconference. So, if we want these employees to be aligned with the company’s philosophy, this company still has to have a real philosophy beyond, stupidly, making money. Indeed, when everyone knows in which direction to row, it is also easier to implement telework which is, let us remember, a form of remote trust. Clearly, large companies need to explain more about where they want to go and how to get there. As one economist pointed out: the company of tomorrow will no longer move like a big whale but like a school of fish: everyone in the company must be able to integrate the values ​​of the company. And this is not a short-term challenge, as with the price of wooden pallets, but the main challenge for the next ten years!

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