LMHT’s Strategic Resilience During the COVID-19 Crisis
As we approach the three-year mark of the coronavirus crisis, it is clear that companies across the globe had to redefine how they did business. With the workplace dynamic turned upside down, creativity and resilience were the only way to combat the change brought on by the pandemic.
First Impacts of the Virus
The first impact of the 2020 pandemic was the overwhelming public reaction to the Covid virus. Like many others, the LMHT workforce started masking up and sanitizing whenever at work. To promote social distancing at the office, we installed translucent screens for cubicles to provide protection. As time passed, fear of the virus spreading had a much more significant impact on the business sector. With people staying home, fewer people frequenting stores, restaurants and shopping centers — “normal” as we knew it was gone.
Businesses dependent on customers and regular patrons were at a loss for income and struggling to find a balance. Restaurants with indoor dining were forced to close, with some never reopening. Owners and developers were deciding to postpone current construction and new store locations due to lower profits caused by the economy.
Helping Those With Change
At LMHT Associates, we seized the opportunity to work with some of our restaurant clients to capitalize on the ‘new normal’ for restaurants. As more people found ways to buy meals from restaurant chains that previously only offered in-store dining, our National Restaurant Designers division was able to help several of our clients with new drive thru and pick up capabilities such as On The Go ordering for Golden Corral. These transformations in design yielded more opportunities for our clients to be profitable not only through the beginning stages of the pandemic, but into the following years as the standards for the Quick Service industry have adapted.
With Change and Challenges Comes Creativity
With the entire office working remotely, new challenges were presented. How could we continue to work as a well-functioning team without face-to-face interaction?
Covid allowed us to get creative with our collaboration — a new way of communicating, supervising and checking work during production. As a team, our LMHT Associates brainstormed new software and methods of working. Tele-conferencing software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom meeting or Go-To meeting were used to stay connected and allowed us to learn together by choosing the best, most productive version of the software.
We also took the time to listen to our clients. Involving the clients was paramount to our success because they were experiencing the same learning curve as our firm. Their input was invaluable in determining the best methods for communicating remotely.
Productivity Challenges and Changes
Another challenge to working remotely was maintaining our production level while being in separate locations. Part of our philosophy at LMHT is to train each employee to work intelligently, complimenting CAD work with design/construction methods and cross-training into other disciplines. We saw the benefit of this ideology when we physically separated to our homes.
Employees and supervisors started to better understand how their competencies interacted with other disciplines to prevent a constant need to be supervised. This mind shift made us much more productive and helped us maintain the quality of work our clients came to expect no matter where our employees worked.
A Broad Look at Change
Another benefit of the pandemic for LMHT was that we gained new clients and broadened our project base in industries such as multi-family housing, retail stores/centers and warehouses. Designers also learned more about clients and companies they previously wouldn’t have experienced. Our workforce brought new ideas and innovation to our clients through collaboration and new ways of seeing the design.
LMHT: Learning Through Change
At LMHT Associates, our mission is to provide excellence in client service through our vision, expertise, ethics and original designs. While our first priority is to provide quality building designs that exceed client expectations, we also believe every construction project is born from a vision that extends from the client’s core purpose.
Our team specializes in crafting original building designs that provide clients with long-term ROI while being environmentally responsible. For more information, visit our website or fill out the form below.
