Story Highlights
- Employee well-being has a direct impact on the Business outcome.
- Preparation for next new normal with some new policies.
- The idea to rethink the new way of doing business.
- Strategies created for Work from home and work from office.
The idea to return to work after the unusual summer was something new that the companies were facing with this new normal. Over the past few months, companies learnt the new way of working and connecting with people with the help of digitalization. While the entire world is curious for the invention of the vaccine for COVID, organizations have re-energized the way of working with new learning and innovation in the work structure. COVID reminds me of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). As John Casey said “A foundational rule for success in a VUCA world is to accept the fact that instability is the norm, and that stability is just a passing phase”. As the global health crisis COVID 19 multiplies, the goal for the organizations should be to rebuild for long term.
Due to recent events surrounding the pandemic, CUNIX faced a new reality: working remotely. Enabling a remote workforce was not “business as usual”, there are critical differences in managing in-office and remotely: communication, culture and environment. This shift from in-office to remote was quite successful for CUNIX and was accepted by everyone in the organization. This shift bought many employee benefits to us like increased employee productivity, efficiency, flexibility to work by saving commute time. CUNIX being rich in “in-office experience” it was a deep adoption period for it to accept for remote work by having trust, communication and company support for all the work which was done successfully.
The transition from work from home to resuming office was quite smooth due to right policies set up by the organization. Some pre-requisites were done before resuming office like:
Employee Concern information: A small survey was done to know the concerns and availability of the employees to travel back to office with this new normal. Employee wellbeing is of utmost importance for us. Before resuming we wanted to ensure whether all the employees are ready to travel with all the safe options to travel. The feedback received from all showed a positive response to resume the office. WFH was allowed for those employees who stayed far and travelling was a major problem.
Exit WFH policy and guidelines: Once the employee wellbeing was ensured, exit WFH policy and guidelines was made to be followed by everyone in the organization. The policy included some operational rules to be followed during work hours and some health and hygiene measures for everyone. The policy was made ensuring employee safety and wellbeing. It was accepted and followed by all in the organization. It helped the employees by knowing certain things that should be kept in mind with some dos’ and don’ts.
Social distancing seating arrangements: Socializing is an important part of our lives. With this social distancing and new normal in practice, it was important for us to maintain social distance at office. To make it possible, organization created a social distance seating structure to ensure that safety of all. We learnt doing our work in new ways which bought us new learning, showed resilience and helped us to be more innovative.
Work from home and office strategies: After facing the lockdown for almost 90 days, CUNIX started working from office on 8th June 2020. As per the Maharashtra guidelines and rules, we called 15 people to office that can travel through private vehicles or safe public transport. We saw things improving initially and all employees comfortable travelling to office. CUNIX management team initially decided to keep all the working Saturday’s as work from home for safety purpose. Looking at the COVID condition, the management decide to keep 2 days from office and rest WFH Various WFH strategies were used to avoid travelling and follow all safety norms.
HR Survey: During this period of working from office, an HR survey was done to gather the feedback from the employees about how they feel with this new normal and their views on it. Following questions were asked by the HR:
- Was the productivity high during WFH or WFO, if less productivity was seen, then what were the probable reasons to it?
- Do you feel positive about coming to office and note down the reasons?
- How many of you feel are prepared for any kind of emergencies that can arise due to COVID-19?
- Do you feel good about your mental health, what do you do to improve your mental health?
Feedback of the survey showed: 90% of the workforce felt that productivity remains high during work from office as there was easy accessibility with team members which made the work faster. While 10% of the workforce felt that work from home gave them opportunity to think through new processes and better way of doing work due to more peaceful time.
Almost everyone feels positive about coming to office due to following reasons:
- Connecting with people
- Lively Work environment
- Less distractions than home
Only 1 or 2 people were prepared for any medical emergencies due to COVID, rest were not prepared for any emergency, therefore a guideline was created for the employees with all the information required.
Constant lockdown and work from home had affected people’s mental health, to overcome this problem, people engaged themselves in many learning opportunities like doing yoga, exercises, reading books, following their hobbies and so on.
The above survey was done only for organizational study purpose and better understanding of the employee views on WFH and WFO. The survey showed that people were quite productive at home but they missed in-office work environment.
Guidelines on “measures to follow if an employee test positive”: HR team created a guide on what an employee needs to do in case if he/she tests positive in case if the unfortunate occurs. The guide had been created after doing the initial research. The guide talks about on the procedure of what to do in case anyone catches the infection and answers the following questions:
1. How to identify the symptoms?
2. What to do if the symptoms indicate infection?
3. Contact numbers for testing centers?
4. Instructions about what care needs to be taken?
5. Essentials to be maintained for such situation.
6. Charges of various procedures, Other Dos and Don’ts.
The guide was created for the employees to keep it handy in case if it is required at any point of time.
“Going back” to the way we were before COVID-19 is not an option. The challenge, and I think the opportunity, is now to start the process of thinking about a “new normal”.
As it is rightly said, “We cannot re-write the chapters of history already past, but we can learn from them, evolve and adapt. The new normal may even be a better normal, certainly a different normal”
Priyanka Parikh- HR Manager
(CUNIX Infotech Pvt.Ltd)