Business ‘bouncebackability’ after coronavirus

Coronavirus business tracker: April 16th 2020

Anyone who was a Soccer AM viewer in the early 2000’s may remember a challenge amongst the presenters to use the word ‘bouncebackability’ live on air.

Wind forward to 2020 and ‘bouncebackability’ looks set to take centre stage in the business world.

It all began after Iain Dowie, then manager of Crystal Palace Football Club, claimed his team had ‘bouncebackability’ after winning promotion to the Premier League despite having floundered in the relegation zone at the wrong end of the table just a few months earlier. In lay terms, ‘we had some bad results, took a few hits… but we survived and came back stronger than ever’.

And whilst you’d have struggled to find ‘bouncebackability’ in any reputable dictionary at the time, it quickly took-off in the sporting world as new parlance. Pundits would comment on the ‘bouncebackability’ of a team winning this week despite suffering an embarrassing loss the week before.

Coaches and managers would applaud the ‘bouncebackability’ of their players; whilst journalists would grill under-pressure stars with questions of whether their ‘bouncebackability’ had gone forever?

Wind forward to 2020 and ‘bouncebackability’ looks set to take centre stage in the business world.

Whilst business fortunes continue to suffer – 83% of small businesses and 85% of medium/large businesses in the UK say that Covid-19 is negatively impacting them (up 10 percentage points and 16pp respectively compared to two weeks prior) – confidence levels have stabilised.

The government (tax-payer) has intervened.  Over a fifth of small businesses (21%) are actively considering using the newly announced Self-Employment Income Support Scheme; whilst 1 in 3 medium/large businesses (33%) report having already taken advantage of the Job Support Scheme (furlough).

The result is a bit of short-term relief. The proportion of businesses confident in surviving the Covid-19 crisis has marginally improved in the past two weeks (67% vs. 63%). It may be far from happy times but, for many, there is at least respite from short-term panic.

The critical question therefore becomes one of how well-prepared businesses are to capitalise on opportunities once the lockdown relaxes? There are signs that economic re-bound opportunities could be rapid. Already the Chinese property market is seeing a resurgence as conditions in the country relax.

But how well equipped will UK businesses be to capitalise? Will gaps left through furloughed staff, stalled initiatives and abandoned investments hinder progress? Or will decisions be taken now that set businesses up for rapid success?

In other words, the question we should all be considering: what is the ‘bouncebackability’ of our business?

The statistics in this post are taken from Savanta’s Covid-19 trackers. For more information, or to find out how we can help you discover your bouncebackability, please visit: https://info.savanta.com/covid-19-survey-tracker