What can we learn from Covid-19?
About two days after India started their lockdown our home broadband went down. And, not for the first time, we realised just how much we rely on it – not least because we live in a poor mobile signal area so are used to doing everything via WIFI and the internet.
As I sat on the (landline) phone in a virtual queue waiting to speak to a customer advisor I started thinking about business continuity and what the global pandemic might teach us.
Large-scale global centres are a mainstay for Business Process Outsourcing and Customer Contact and, even with a trend towards ‘right-shoring’ creating a mix of onshore and offshore capability, there are still hundreds of thousands of people working in large scale centres across the globe.
Over my career I’ve written and operated a number of Business Continuity Plans and I, for one, had never envisaged a pandemic that would see entire countries closed for business. This meant that my and other Business Continuity Plans just wouldn’t stack up in the current crisis.
In time we will hear the stories of well organized, agile responses this crisis and we will learn the lessons of what could be done better.
Globally there are many learnings for how we operate business on a global scale. But looking specifically at Business Continuity Planning, I’m going to start with the working practices and soft skills needed to manage teams in a crisis environment.
Look beyond technology readiness
One global BPO provider has published their story about how they have been able to scale up their working from home capability to 99% within a few weeks of the crisis and it’s a good case study on how to mobilise remote working quickly[1]. But I wonder if the ability to provide IT resources quickly is the only consideration.
For example, speaking to a customer services agent at a global airline, I heard how how later that evening she would take her desktop PC home so that she could continue working. She was less concerned about the practicalities of the technology than the interaction and team camaraderie that would be missing in the new way of working.
Equally, a senior HRD at a global consumer products company was reflecting that their shared services teams had all the technology to work from home, but many were lacking the soft skills needed to manage remote teams.
They had found that in a dynamic, relatively young team, their team leads in particular had developed the technical skills they needed but didn’t know how to manage a remote team. Many had learnt their skills on the job by observing and following other leaders, but suddenly new skills were needed where everyone was working from home.
I’m a fan of visual management as a key factor in efficient shared services operations. ‘Huddle boards’ with daily statistics, issues, actions etc provide the drumbeat for daily workload management and keep teams running. How do you recreate this in a remote environment? Virtual collaboration tools – Teams, Skype, Zoom etc have made it easier for teams to work remotely and can be used to recreate the daily huddle.
Then there’s the skill needed to ‘check in’ on progress and manage daily targets. It’s relatively easy to see how colleagues are getting on when you are physically co-located but much harder when working remotely. It is easy to become overbearing or too relaxed, both of which are demotivating for teams. Consider increasing the number of huddles per day, as for a crisis environment, for example meeting for 15 minutes three times per day will increase the number of touch points within teams and maintain momentum.
And of course, if some of the team are having to juggle home-schooling or partners and housemates also working from home, what support or concessions are needed to protect mental wellbeing as well as getting the job done? This kind of judgement is an acquired skill that is developed through experience and consultation with others. Maintaining a buddy network for team leaders can help provide support for those team leaders developing skills in real time.
Thinking beyond technology with these and other questions will help bolster Business Continuity Plans for organisations. By taking the opportunity to look at broader working practices; the soft skills required for remote team management and including homeworking testing as part of hot and cold back up site testing will help better prepare teams for Business Continuity, whatever the event.
About
Joanna Page is a Managing Director at Selida. She is a recognised, and industry awarded, leader with more than 18-years’ consulting experience across Business Process Outsourcing, Shared Services and Global Business Services.
[1] References
