As 2023 carries on, and the difficult realities of the pandemic become mostly a memory, it’s easy to point to the ways our lives, and livelihoods, were disrupted. Riding the economic dip like the rest of industry, ALTRANS was in the midst of it, forced to make strategic decisions about what the near term needed to look like in the new environment we found ourselves. At first, the decisions were reactive, and some even required: social distancing, telework, online meetings, etc. Then, as the months became years, some of these reactions emerged as viable and sustainable ways to operate a business. 

Telework, for one, has provided a greater work-life balance for many of our employees. No longer does the end of each workday culminate with a stressful commute home. Instead, we’ve captured that time via a successful telework deployment, and have been able to return time itself back to our staff as a benefit for their personal lives. With our team dispersed around the bay area, the state, and even internationally, telework as a standard has allowed us to retain excellent staff, wherever they reside. 

And what could be more salient in turbulent times than tools that could help identify and mitigate risk. In some senses, the middle of a pandemic may seem an odd time to measure risk. The desire to recover and move forward would have us believe the focus should be on performance indicators and how to grow. However, developing and monitoring key risk indicators (KRIs) is important for any company, rain or shine. Our KRIs are linked to our three-year strategic priorities so we can quickly grade and manage risk around what’s most important, and could be most impactful, to our long-term strategies. From there, we proactively work solutions and success into our operations. 

“Going beyond” is one of our core values at ALTRANS, and it means we see challenges as opportunities, that we go beyond the problem to find a solution. It means when difficulties arise, as they do, and always will, the availability of a solution will lie as much in our attitude and perspective as it does in our effort, talent, or otherwise. So, we continue into 2023, appreciating this year’s relative normalcy, ready for whatever opportunity is around the corner.