Yes we are spread all over. When you have such a large organization with almost 33000 employees, more than 4.5 L secondary workforce spread across all over, it is difficult. We consider our frontline workers, delivery staff the Covid warriors. Everyday our delivery staff is reaching different 30 – 40 houses. In a month or so they are connecting with 1000 of houses. So that becomes a huge challenge.

We focused on 3 fundamentals, which we thought were essential:

We gave only authenticated information and guidance to our teams. We had a hyper committee which was constituted, and we have been meeting regularly since the last 50-60 days. We also decided to take out advisories which would be sent out to all the stakeholders, and they comprise all the guidelines.

Connecting with people was another element. It makes more impact when you connect with your people in adversities.

Keeping people engaged and motivated. We have 60% of our people working from refineries or pipelines or supply locations. Another 40% of our employees work from administrative offices. It was essential to keep both these groups engaged and motivated.

In his opinion five learning’s will be very important for us to take it forward:

Flexibility, Adaptability , Agility , Resilient, Empathy

We have almost 27000 retail outlets as of now, out of which around 170 are the ones where we operate; the rest are franchises operated by dealers. There has been no difference in productivity, in fact in many places, the delivery and customer teams of the dealers have responded extremely well to this situation. We have supported each of them by offering a 5L ex gratia and have covered them under medical insurance.

Going by the learning, a lot of new activities have now been undertaken. We have realized that we can work from home. Also we are realizing maybe our work assignments need to be more developed. We had developed technical competencies for each role on paper. This crisis gave us an opportunity to take that forward. We are planning as to how we can align our customers with the internal stakeholders at any point of time.

We have our offices in all the major cities in India as well as in Singapore. All of a sudden there was this realization, that HR Tech solutions for employees is an essential service. Earlier customer requirements were more inclined towards controlling the work of employees, and in no time this perspective shifted to care and concern. So the tools were the same, but requirements changed. For instance, many organizations wanted to check if their teams were safe and doing well in this crisis. Going by this demand, our team worked relentlessly to get a survey tool in place, which can be used to reach out to people on both, smartphones as well as via SMS.

The deployments have been huge. People are looking out for HR Software with facial recognition technology without having to invest in a recognition device. This led us to develop a mobile based facial recognition with Artificial Intelligence. There is also a surge in demand for chatbots and multilingual solutions. Fortunately, all our solutions come in all 26 local languages. This has helped us in reaching out to diverse people.

Another thing I observed in corporate India is; everyone started empathizing. Another phenomenon is the employees started reciprocating, which is very good for the economy. They started thinking of the company first, some employees are ready to leave their leave balances, and some are ready to leave their incentives. People have realized that this is a global crisis.

Absolutely! We had most of the HR Tech modules ready before, but the demand has increased now. The activity and engagements have become 200%, and we are hiring more people as well as collaborating with partners.

We do have many SMS solutions, as well as tracking solutions for non smartphones via tower triangulation. I have companies who are worried about their employees who have moved to their native, and they want to track them from a concern perspective. So we have SMS solutions using which it can be tracked in which region.

We have been trying to reach out to the Arogya Sethu team, to see if we can integrate our solution with them. Around 2.5 CR people are using it, so we can integrate with them and try and keep people safe. So like we have the best HR solution with a mobile application , where you can check from your phone, how far you’re from Red Zone. This is a national movement, so we are checking the feasibility of linking it with Arogya Sethu and opening it free nation-wide.

It’s a beautiful experimentation; the moment the country was stuck up with Covid. But we had planned it much ahead as we have global presence in around 20 countries, so we knew what was coming. We had all the Business Continuity Plans in place for all the departments. And as for the migrant laborers, at the time when Covid struck, we had 35000 CR of work in hand, and the construction was on at about 150 odd locations across India. As soon as lockdown was declared, we ensured all our laborers were taken care of. We started providing them food, ensured better living conditions for them by acquiring a high degree of sanitization and retained them. They are all migrant laborers and we could retain more than 60% of them. When the lockdown was relaxed, we re-started our constructions. As far as agency laborers were concerned, like security and sanitization, we took them in-house. We recognized they are our frontline workforce and retained them. We gave them INR 250 per day, when most of the organizations were cutting them.

Power is a very essential commodity and the show must go on. So in the operation area, nothing was impacted and we also had a backup plan in place for each station. An advanced preparation was very useful to us. Also being part of disaster management, we have handled multiple disasters like earthquakes, floods in Srinagar, recent Amphan in Odisha, so we knew how to handle the crisis.

We decided to change the entire workplace practices due to Covid. It made it essential to revisit all the processes, policies, systems and we had to make them fit to the people. As for the HR perspective, you need to be adjustable, flexible and you need to redefine the policies. Safety was our biggest priority. We also started tele-medicines, and for the ease of payment allowed our workforce to send scanned copies of bills from any part of the country. We went full throttle in the HR team, even with regards to promotions. We kept exploring multiple ways of keeping employees engaged.

Innovation is the key. In some of our sub-stations, our people invented their own kind of sanitization machine. From CSR perspective, we routed almost 200 CR in PM cares fund, and around 30 CR in migrant, construction and agency laborer.

Another learning was, we already had a calendar in place and decided to go ahead with it, without any changes to the operations and training programs. Also since lots of people are working from home, we started with multiple learning initiatives, and are rolling out programs starting with morning meditation, yoga to hard core company programs. Since we are located in many remote locations, communication is the key for us, and as HR it’s very important to create a 2 way communication system.

As the country was preparing to work from home, we decided that the board members will continue to work. We had board meetings held on virtual platforms, to discuss various issues. We had to ensure safety along with 24*7 operations. We did everything possible to make it a safe workplace, and provided relaxation in terms of policies. Also when people know you care for them, things fall in place.

Communicating in a timely, precise and transparent way is essential. You need to communicate the change in various roles as well as remove misinformation effectively. Prepare the employees mentally to take up additional responsibilities. Engaged employees are the best assets.

Emphasised that If you communicate transparently with your employees and put forward the business uncertainty situation, then many of them would understand the problems better.

Agreed with Dr. Balyan, everything can happen if you discuss it with people. Everyone needs to realize this situation will redefine the way in which we work. Agility and adaptability are crucial for our survival.

Justified one of the questions asked by the audience that Work from Home is a preferred option for women. He mentioned that women in his family effectively work from home as well as managing other things at home. Women are better managers in terms of time management and multi-skilling.

Added to this on a lighter note, it’s a good opportunity to make your spouse multi-skilled. On a serious note, earlier Work from Home was only for the IT sector. But now it’s essential and imperative to come up with Work from Home guidelines.

Made a valid point here that the current Work from Home experience has been bad. But this work is not the regular Work from Home that should happen in future. Female employees are facing multiple issues, and we are under the assumptions that since people are working from home, it implies they are available 24*7. But the future will change as it has to be redefined. There has to be a clear cut balance between work and family life.

Mentioned that From an HR perspective, the main points are: How do you deal with uncertainty? Do you have people that are comfortable to work in uncertainty? How do you convert people to manage the situation with ease? What changes are happening? Covid has hassled the process so fast that everyone is taken aback. But changes are happening and how do you predict what will happen? We need people who can help us with predictability, and larger organizations have come up with such positions.

Made an analogy. It’s like there’s a huge building that goes haywire due to an earthquake. You can either tinkle with it or build a new one, and put in only those things which are essential; because in your old house there would have been many things which you were not using. So HR now has the option to restructure things differently. Like we at ZingHR use the word Outcomation; do only what is going to give you business outcomes for organizations as well as employees.

As the country was preparing to work from home, we decided that the board members will continue to work. We had board meetings held on virtual platforms, to discuss various issues. We had to ensure safety along with 24*7 operations. We did everything possible to make it a safe workplace, and provided relaxation in terms of policies. Also when people know you care for them, things fall in place.

Communicating in a timely, precise and transparent way is essential. You need to communicate the change in various roles as well as remove misinformation effectively. Prepare the employees mentally to take up additional responsibilities. Engaged employees are the best assets.

Emphasised that If you communicate transparently with your employees and put forward the business uncertainty situation, then many of them would understand the problems better.

Agreed with Dr. Balyan, everything can happen if you discuss it with people. Everyone needs to realize this situation will redefine the way in which we work. Agility and adaptability are crucial for our survival.

justified one of the questions asked by the audience that Work from Home is a preferred option for women. He mentioned that women in his family effectively work from home as well as managing other things at home. Women are better managers in terms of time management and multi-skilling.

Added to this on a lighter note, it’s a good opportunity to make your spouse multi-skilled. On a serious note, earlier Work from Home was only for the IT sector. But now it’s essential and imperative to come up with Work from Home guidelines.

Made a valid point here that the current Work from Home experience has been bad. But this work is not the regular Work from Home that should happen in future. Female employees are facing multiple issues, and we are under the assumptions that since people are working from home, it implies they are available 24*7. But the future will change as it has to be redefined. There has to be a clear cut balance between work and family life.

Mentioned that From an HR perspective, the main points are: How do you deal with uncertainty? Do you have people that are comfortable to work in uncertainty? How do you convert people to manage the situation with ease? What changes are happening? Covid has hassled the process so fast that everyone is taken aback. But changes are happening and how do you predict what will happen? We need people who can help us with predictability, and larger organizations have come up with such positions.

Made an analogy. It’s like there’s a huge building that goes haywire due to an earthquake. You can either tinkle with it or build a new one, and put in only those things which are essential; because in your old house there would have been many things which you were not using. So HR now has the option to restructure things differently. Like we at ZingHR use the word Outcomation; do only what is going to give you business outcomes for organizations as well as employees.

What we have learnt from Covid is, how do you make your team adapt to a new way of working? How quick is your team to adapt to these changes? How comfortable are you with these changes? People do get perturbed with changes, especially if they have been following a particular work style for more than 10 years. How do you manage these changes? Leadership crisis is different. We need leaders at all levels, who can work effectively in crisis.

Added a valid point that the best service HR can do is to make HR a trait niche manager and not keep it as a department. If HR can identify their purpose in the business; their job is done.