Here’s the bad news: real GDP in the UK dipped to -10.3% in 2020, and unemployment rose from 3.7% to 5.4% across 2019/2020. Similar grim figures have emerged across the globe as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic – GDP growth for the EU was -7.4%, and unemployment rose from 3.7% to 8.9% in the USA – and with the inevitable emergence of viral mutations there is still a hard road ahead. The (sort-of) good news is that vaccines were produced in record time, and approved just as quickly in many countries. The dark cloud behind the silver lining is that the availability of vaccines will for some time be limited, and will disproportionately benefit rich countries at a cost to poorer ones: unlike trade, altruism is definitely not global.

Races are run over a variety of distances, but if we were asked to name the shortest and the longest we’d likely say the 100-metre sprint and the marathon. In much the same way, predictions about the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic have ranged from it petering out by the end of the year to being with us permanently. Whatever the outcome, though, there won’t be a rapid end without an effective vaccine, which is some way off, so the world is in for a marathon rather than a sprint.

Sprinting demands a short but massive burst of energy. For corporates the energy was provided partly by . . .

If you’re an HR manager, 2020 is probably the most challenging time you’ve ever had to deal with. First the pandemic: lockdowns, working from home, Zoom meetings. Then the consequences: a global economic downturn, disappearing markets, redundancies.

Experience of previous shocks like the financial crisis of 2008/9 shows that economies do bounce back, often faster than anticipated, but until that happens there will be much corporate hardship. Resilience is needed more than ever, not just for negotiating the crisis but for moving forward when it recedes. What can you do to help your people adjust to the huge changes affecting the way we work?

We often think of change in relation to the state we’ve changed from to the state we’ve changed to. In my previous blog I shifted the focus to the gap between them: what change is really about is the transition from the one state to the other, and it’s in that space between them that resilience skills are crucial. One of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic will be a significant and possibly prolonged downturn in the global economy, which presents us all with a huge and significant transition: as companies contract or are wound up altogether there will inevitably be redundancies, especially when the buffer of furlough payments are phased out.

We tend to think about change in relation to the states we move to or from: the response to the Covid-19 pandemic is about the freedom before it arrived compared with the restrictions of the lock-down. The key component, though, is the transition. We quite quickly adapt to new situations, and having to work from home or not being able to meet friends becomes the new normal. What may be overlooked is the process of getting from one state to the next, and it’s here that resilience comes into play.