okay viewers and you are still watching the breakfast show and in this segment of our program we will talk about how can entrepreneurs and smes survive the impact the economic impact of coronavirus and we are joined today by mr abdul magdy he’s a business coach and he will talk to us more about this morning good morning good morning sir what are the indications of coronavares and the resulting lockdown on the entrepreneurs and the smes yeah that’s not good i think all of us can see by like looking at the indicators especially we usually go at like the stock market looking at how the stock markets are performing and also understanding and visualizing the effects of the lockdown that that this is getting into an economic recession and it’s also going to be kind of intense giving that the underlying economic activities are quite suspended to a lot of extent so it’s about like projecting how bad things are going to go and the time is going to take it to recover but we can see that like the effects of a lockdown and suspension of a lot of economic activities are going to be intense in the economy and accordingly also it’s going to be on small medium enterprises and entrepreneurs so what are the top challenges of working remotely or at or at home yeah i think like the the solution for a lot of industries who are able to kind of to afford to work from home is that the do it so i think like because people couldn’t actually come to the head office or to the companies like offices so they start trying to work and produce remotely and we can imagine all kind of like distractions that happen inside home because like usually employees are used to go out in the morning and go to their workplace and they have their setup they have their desks and they usually do not have that at home i think certain industries in the past years have been having that so for example those working in technology or internet businesses they’re quite used to that so they might have actually maintained a home office for a very long period of time one of these people have been lucky to have a home office since for 14 years so i know exactly how you kind of you can isolate yourself from the surrounding environment and you have your own setup to be able to produce but i think like one of the big challenges of jumping into remote work unprepared which is i see as a challenge here is that you have a large number of people like to work remotely you have to work from home and they were not trained and they were not on board and accordingly you don’t have the tools or the mindset to work now so we can imagine all kind of distractions delays and deliverables and if you listen to a lot of business people who are really talking about it they see that there is no productivity at all so these are all kind of challenges that’s happening right now with the sharp transition into virtual work yes well mr magazine what is the smart work program and what are the main components of it yeah i think like smart work is a term that’s used for a certain type of like contracts and i think like this this has been going on for a lot of industries in which that there are people who can actually produce works remote like remotely or independent office space so of a specific physical space so smart work is not like a new term but rather it had been around in which that you kind of contract with a company through which that you’re an employee of the company but you can actually work independent of the physical space and sometimes it’s about a number of days so you’re required to work for example like half the time from an office and half the time remotely so smart work is about an organized program that gets into the contract the agreement between the employer and the employees about how they’re gonna do that remote work thing so it’s a it’s a proactive approach to look at the virtual work dilemma that we’re getting into right now is that it gets into the agreement as an employee and an employer is that this is how remote work works yeah and by then within a program there’s a lot of components with it and some of this is to the employer side and some of them to the employee side so it balances the expectations and the way things work between employers and employees so i think like companies who had smart work programs right now they are the luckiest because their employees and their management know exactly what to expect and understand the dynamics of how things should work and some of the companies right now are actually looking at how do i kind of change that immediate change into virtual work into a systemic way of managing that and these are the companies that’s right now looking at smart work yeah so as a team leader or a ceo of a company how can i know if formalizing a smart work program could be good for me yeah i think that that’s going to depend on a lot of factors so this is the industry in terms of what is the industry that i’m working on like for example if i work in technology if i work in knowledge related some people like working design offices so they like they design products they don’t have to kind of be involved in execution so any like knowledge based or like remote support even people work in customer service because lots of customer service jobs have really moved online so you’re doing chat even doing video chat and also we’re going to be seeing technology evolving to provide the tools for people to do that conveniently so if i am the employer if i’m the one who’s responsible for running the business i want to start thinking of does this work for me and i would figure out if it doesn’t work fully like to what percentage can i make it work for me and i think because like for the challenges and also the benefits of managing like a physical work environment because if we look at it other facts of this independent industry things like traffic and commute because people normally like wake up in the morning and they spend one one and a half hours getting to the workplace so this is a lot of wasted time that that usually like happens every day so if i’m an employer if i’m able to save that time and save that headache with my employees i pro probably should expect more productivity but as an employee who used to go to work every day in the morning the smart work is it convenient for him or at the the beginning it could represent somehow a burden on him or he he might get bored from from doing that yeah i think it’s a sharp transition especially for the employees who have been doing it for a long period of time so for them to have the idea of working from home i think people who work in technology on the internet they have some like funny memes that goes around for saying that now people should not be expecting that you’re working from home so when you tell someone that you’re working from home they do not believe that so they you think they are unemployed so a lot of extent the culture of having people working for home is not out there and there are many challenges especially if someone is managing a household so there are kids and there are responsibilities and there are different types of distractions so it becomes really difficult for them to manage their productivity during that time so how can uh i avoid these challenges yeah i think like the best way to avoid these is to actually have a program something that’s already designed where you onboard people to it so it’s not just an event something random that happened but rather you really think that through and that actually comes in when you sit down and you think about like how do i make that work on uh on the long or the medium term and when you think about you think that there is part of it has to do with the physical environment right because my employees are going to be working from a specific desk so i want to make sure that they have a physical in a specific room so i want to make sure that they have this room or they have this section in a room where they have the desk convenience they have the it set up they have they have the computers you have the internet connection so they have everything they need for them to produce that work yes so one component is actually producing like having the physical environment available for your employees another part is also having like the software and the systems to manage tasks so a big part is like waking up into in the morning just going to the desk you have to see that these are the things that i’m expecting to be doing like to be doing and i’m also can connect to the rest of the companies there’s like the internet is like pieces things like facebook for example it’s like social network where you can go there but you’re going there to work so you find like your manager is giving you a task and you can actually report the amount of time you worked on that task so having this it set up and the project management tools and the dashboards available on these species is very vital for them to know where they are of the hitting app yes so if we took care of the physical environment and we provided them with the tools there is a big impact that comes to the mindset mindset and well-being so it’s about how does people think and i think that’s that’s a pretty tricky part and there have been a lot of efforts especially from that people department or what used to be called the human resources department in terms of how do you kind of how do you get people excited to do the work how do you make sure that they are kind of being productive while sitting on this computer and producing the work so there’s a lot of thinking that has to do to go into the idea of productivity and mindset still you have to be productive because there is an amount of work which should be uh done at a certain time or there is a due date uh sometimes you you do conferences via the the video calls so you are somehow committed to to to to work uh i think that’s a big challenge i think when you think about it that’s the biggest challenge i think why you see there’s a problem with virtual work because you cannot guarantee that employees are going to get things done because they have on time especially because if they have a lot of distractions even if they have a deadline even if the tools in that there is a deadline for it they are going to procrastinate if they don’t have the setup you know there is no internet connection yeah a lot of distractions with the load on the internet uh these days it might be a challenge as well yeah you have all kind of factors that might affect for them to be able to commit to it and i think that’s where mindset comes in in terms of i could have the setup i could have the tools but i have to have the mindset and attitude to be able to go through the experience and produce the kind of work that i’m supposed to be producing so sir do you believe that smart work can go beyond the phase of coronavirus yeah i think it’s uh i think it’s good to look at it right now for a lot of companies who could actually have been doing smart work and i think looking at it proves to be successful in many companies it actually had proven to be very very successful in some companies yes and i think also it’s like it becomes successful for certain times of employees and certain employees have hard time being on board into it so this is another tricky part of like getting people who are not used to technology for example training them to technology so this is another component of doing some effort and boarding people into that system and i think like onboarding is the key word here because you can find the tools you can find everything but you have to be managing that properly and also you have to be doing that in a very uh calculated and calm manner in which that you do not over stress people because this is a new experience for them so you have to be very empathetic in terms of handing like um handing them this in a very kind of easy way taking care of their well-being their stitch levels etc and we’re actually seeing a lot of technology tools but getting into that so there’s a lot of ai tools that actually assist in employees activity like there’s voice enabled tools that you can talk to which basically making sure that you’re listening to a certain type of music you’re following up with the tasks so we’re seeing a lot of voice assisted technologies but getting into that space in which that you’re waking in the morning there’s someone who talks to you it tells you what you’re supposed to do and this is all the voice automated technologies things like alexa and siri if you’re acquainted with that on a mobile phone that you kind of assist you is finding things on your phone and technology is getting into having this virtual manager or virtual coach that you can talk to and by then they cannot only take care of the tasks but also they take care of your well-being because you understand your character the personality type what you probably should they should actually suggest for you you need to take a break right now because that’s how intelligent technology is potentially getting into that yes uh sir what is the first step i should take as a business owner a ceo or an employer in order to start implementing the uh the smart work yeah i think like like lots of changes i think the biggest stress comes when you just jump into it without any preparation so i think like there’s a code that says that says people are often not trained to jump so definitely shifting into smart work is a big jump but you need to be trained with that so you need to kind of connect with people who do have the experience when it comes to smart work and to kind of consult them into how do i put together a program that fits my company and how do i train people and onboarding into this program and guarantee and manage productivity moving forward so i think like the the best advice for people who are considering smart work is to kind of pause take some time to reflect on that and allow the time to design and to implement the program thinking about it as a program as a comprehensive program not just as a software tool of bringing up a project management tool because it goes way beyond that so sir if we go back to talk about the smes and to what extent this industry is affected by coronavirus yeah i think we’re gonna we’re gonna be seeing a lot of big companies having cash flow issues and equity in small companies being able to kind of also having cash flow issues so they’re going to be a lot of challenges especially in industries like the tourism for example so you see that there are industries that’s kind of being totally locked down and i think like we have been talking a lot for what we call a digital transformation yeah getting things done over the internet so small and medium enterprises are able to move right now into an internet component not just with smart work getting them employees to work remotely but looking at their strategy and their business model and how they can integrate technology that’s a very important point to mr abdul to what extent the young entrepreneurs and the owners of is could adapt here and try to survive what we are going through how they can manage to um get used to uh what’s going on in order to um have a business which could serve what uh the world is going through yeah i think also because this is this is quite a this is a big event so having a lockdown and having a disease this is this could have a lot of traumatizing effect on people so the best advice the first thing that i personally did is to like self-isolate and reflect on that so you’re just slowing down just not doing any communications and just taking my time into adjusting into that so i think like pausing for a few days not for a very long period of time but for a few days to reflect on that understanding that this is what it is i mean like this is happening because some of these businesses and small businesses they’re going to shut down but the thing is and there’s no way for not not to shut down depending on the industries but they could actually come up with a new idea how they can think out of the box and get new ideas which can survive and serve during that very hard time i think one of the good things right now is that there’s a lot of learning resources that’s just made available online so for them if you run a business and the business became not possible for it to go on and then you have to go through that the bad experience and i think it’s going to have to do a lot of healing time and i think we have to also during times like this we have to be very considerate and empathetic in terms of people are going through things so allowing them the space to get to kind of go through that and being like soft with it but by then we can have a lot of learning resources to see how how they can actually make that work with the new world with the new internet with the e-commerce and then they come up with different ideas in terms of like i’m going to move forward doing that which could be like somehow um complementary to what i used to do or it could be totally different so but then once they figure that out they can actually like as also things become clear with time and also capital becomes more available again they could probably be able to raise funds build a new team and and launch if they were not able to maintain their current operation yeah so uh what are your tips uh to young entrepreneurs at this time yeah i think i think it’s um i think actually personally i think like the young entrepreneurs i don’t think they are that affected by by this event as much as bigger companies so you see bigger companies from people having a lot of payroll and then they have they are taking care of 100 people obligations it’s a big yeah so for entrepreneurs we’re like small teams like they’re two three people they’re getting started they most likely they don’t have that a lot of financial resources and they could actually be working remotely i think for them it becomes about you know like becoming stoic you know like like one of the the concept is becoming really um adapting to what’s happening and also taking it from a positive perspective seeing that these are the things that couldn’t be done because i could see a lot of things you know like there’s a lot of memes with people having like there’s uh a car parking and then there is something big that’s kind of crashed into it and seeing that this is how entrepreneurs um like how chronovirus treated entrepreneurs and then they crashed their cars basically so there’s a lot of people lamenting that the things are destroyed so and that could actually be good for them to reflect on that for a while but afterwards the question is how do i really think about it differently so this is crushed okay i’m fine with it i went through the experience what do i build right now because also it’s very good for a recovering economy to have the entrepreneurs we’re going to come up with new ideas and find out what the economy should do but i think also for egypt it could be a positive thing because we have a lot of young population these could be empowered with the internet so egypt could actually offer a lot of technology enabled and internet-enabled services that would actually drive like economic input into egypt do you think uh mr magdy that the ideas after the uh covered 19 would be different from that of before can we start to have new ideas uh maybe more remote services can can we do that can we we start to have more innovative ideas here yeah i think i think 100 percent and i think like there is something that that’s being said by that which is like when it comes to digital transformation they tell you who took the initiative on digital transformation in your company your ceo your cto or covet 19 and usually people say covet 19. because like people who work in technology we have actually seen all these patterns evolving this time so in the past 10 years we’ve been seeing all these things moving into remote work the economy changing and there was a lot of initiatives and projects in the startup that moves into technology right now is the current situation you’re gonna see that a lot of people are gonna start seeing that so a lot of bigger companies are gonna start seeing that there’s an opportunity with technology there’s an opportunity using the internet so definitely things are going to be different not just with the technology like enabled but also in a way people interact so there’s there’s a lot of theories there that we do not have to get into but whether that the bigger companies are going to survive and expand whether it’s the smaller businesses whether like business is going to be done in a localized environment so these are all different patterns and also depending on how things go when it comes to the timeline and we hope that hopefully like the lockdown is lifted and we’re back to work very soon so i’d like to thank you er mr abdul maghdi business coach thank you for being with us today thanks for having me thank you very much always a pleasure to have you with us uh mr abdul and our dear viewers that will bring us to the end of this edition of the breakfast show you were in the company of myself and my dear friends thank you mahisti and they see you dear viewers tomorrow with a new
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