When times are busy, it can be difficult to stay on the same page with your teams and perfectly on plan. It can be easy to lose sight of the big picture amid day-to-day operations. The end of the year is the perfect opportunity to take a breath, step back and reassess your teams. With the end of the year quickly approaching and the shock of the coronavirus pandemic settling, workplaces can use this time to plan for the possibility of a post-COVID-19 world and beyond. On the other hand, a failure to appropriately plan for the next year can leave you flat-footed when operations start up are back in full swing again in January.
Debrief 2021
So much can change in the workplace within a year’s time. Those changes can seem earth shattering when they occur, but they quickly fall to the wayside as time passes. The end of the year offers time for reflection and a benchmark to measure against. Take time at the end of the year to evaluate how your office and teams have changed. Apart from managing changes in the workplace, checking in with your teams allows you to align everyone’s goals and gauge team members’ morale.
Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to impact offices and workplaces everywhere. Those changes are often some of the most drastic and noticeable, but their effects are not always as clear. For example, some employees working remotely may not communicate with their superiors as well as those working in the office. It’s important to monitor those changes and incorporate them into plans for next year.
There also have been changes to the mortgage industry itself in the past year. Even after the first year of the pandemic, COVID-19 guidelines and flexibilities continued to change. Fannie Mae’s lender letter 2020-03/ 2021-03 has been updated 13 times, and Freddie Mac issued multiple bulletins. However, while changes due to COVID-19 took center stage, other important credit policy updates and guideline changes may have gone unnoticed.