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What are the biggest challenges facing companies in the Capital Region in the coming year? Will there be a real estate reckoning in Baton Rouge? What are businesses doing to ensure diversity and inclusion in their ranks? What does the future of work look like?
Those are some of the topics tackled by five thought leaders in Business Report‘s Trends for 2022 Roundtable, sponsored by Alliance Safety Council, Genesis 360, LLC, McGlinchey Stafford, PLLC, Ochsner Baton Rouge, and Transformyx.
Participants were Drew Patty, Baton Rouge office managing member at McGlinchey Stafford, PLLC; Craig Stevens, owner and founder of Genesis 360, LLC; James DuBos, CEO of Transformyx; Kathy Trahan, president and CEO at Alliance Safety Council; and Chuck Daigle, CEO of Ochsner Baton Rouge and Lake Charles.
Much of the discussion focused on how the pandemic has altered the workplace and changed the way Capital Region companies do business—from health care to construction to industry. Many have been surprised by the positive outcomes of working remotely.
“We had just built out a brand-new customer client service center with lots of capacity for people sitting in seats, taking phone calls and caring for customers,” DuBos says. Then remote work became the norm.
“But what we found is that we had an increase of about 400 percent in call volume with the same team,” he says. “So it showed me that you could deliver a very high performance and maintain a quality of service with remote teams.”
“For the last two years, we have done a virtual conference for 400-plus participants and 180 financial institutions,” says Patty. “And we had the best attendance ever because people could attend virtually. They didn’t have flights … they didn’t have to get permissions … conferences like that are going to have to be hybrid going forward.”
“We are really working to reinvent the way we communicate,” says Trahan. “We are having daily stand-ups. We are popping in for video chats. We are doing everything we can to move things to secure, collaborative cloud solutions so we can work seamlessly from wherever we happen to be. We need to get over our preconceived notions about remote work and learn how to thrive in this new world.”
Several roundtable participants agreed that their organizations will be looking for new ways to diversify services in 2022.
“We’re in the business of taking care of people,” says Daigle, “so we will continue to expand and grow throughout the greater Baton Rouge region. We have many projects underway with our focus to grow access to primary care, pediatrics, women’s services and behavioral health services.”
“In the first year of the pandemic,” says Stevens, “we had our largest revenue growth historically and that was only because we diversified in three divisions: construction, building maintenance and ground maintenance. We had a really good year and it opened our eyes to see that that was where we needed to be. This is not going to be the last pandemic. We want to prepare for whatever is to come. Being able to continue to diversify and scale is our focus for 2022.”
Other topics at the roundtable included cybersecurity, employee recruitment, supply chain issues and technology. Read the full roundtable here.
