Running a company can be difficult at the best of times. Every year presents new challenges that a business needs to be aware of and can potentially change the way the business works.

2020 brings an extra set of challenges thanks to the social and economic upheaval of COVID-19. Fortunately, every business can rise to the challenges, they simply need to choose their skill set wisely. These are the skills most needed in 2020:

Communication has always been important but this year it is proving to be an essential skill. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of employees working from home. Without the ability to talk to each other face to face an array of modern technological solutions have appeared. 

It doesn’t matter which solution your business chooses to use, what matters is that you ensure everyone has the ability to communicate effectively with the team.

This means dedicating resources to maintaining the network, allowing your team to communicate in real-time. Without this, you’ll find that productivity slows and you could be looking at a reduced profit or greater financial issues.

This goes hand-in-hand with communication. Creativity is a great way to find new ways of doing things that work in competitive marketplaces. This year this creativity can be used to help a business continue to trade, even when traditional selling methods and dealing with customers are not an option.

The key to learning creativity is to simply let your employees make suggestions regarding what they think may work. Providing all employees know you are open to suggestions you’ll find there is already a huge amount of creativity in the workplace.

Allowing your employees to work from home means trusting them to get the job done. You have to allow them to flex their hours to suit the other demands on their time. 

But, this isn’t the only flexibility that’s important in 2020. With an extremely volatile market, it’s essential that you outsource work when appropriate. For example, civil jobs, including electrical work and engineering, are best outsourced to professionals. It minimizes the risk and reduces overheads. 

It's going to be very important to flex in all aspects of your business.

Being persuasive is always important as a business leader. You need to persuade customers to use your services. But, you’re also going to need to be good at talking to suppliers and financial backers. Convincing them you are a viable concern, even in difficult times, will be essential to the survival of your business. 

You already know your team can achieve more together than they can individually. This year you need to take this concept and apply it to the business as a whole. Collaborating with a variety of people and other businesses may be the key to your, or their, survival.

All these skills can be easily learned, you simply need to focus on what your business needs most and encourage an open communication policy. You’ll be amazed at what can be achieved