The rapid spreading of novel coronavirus has been affecting the global economy to a large extent. To avoid any kind of the epidemic outbreak companies are in situation to review possible remote working as well as flexi-work options. While this is a critical time, not every business, has the training, resources, and even bandwidth to support the sudden move to massive remote work. For several companies, a move to remote work requires a significant change in their work process and culture.
Remote work was the core of Clarion’s ethos from the beginning. We took the virtual working concept and built a culture around its necessity, flexibility, and efficiency. We have the groundwork in place for working from anywhere and anytime.
Clarion’s Remote Workspace and Virtual Collaboration
Successful project delivery depends on who is working on it, but it is fed by the people who we hired and who we retained to employ. Our best hiring process ensures this in the first place.
Within Clarion, we all can work remotely -everyone from marketing, support, delivery, HR, sales and to the CTO and CEO. Having team members working virtually makes it easy to support clients and respond to anything even during difficult times & situations. As we always want to be there for clients when they need us, it is helpful for us to have sales, delivery and support people across the time zones. Continued marketing team operations even during unexpected stoppages provide greater brand continuity. The three main ingredients for our consistent business continuity are:
Better Collaboration
The team and managers are equipped with the technology, tools, and training needed to collaborate and communicate. As we are working remotely, we also know that we need to work harder to stay connected. Empowering the team with the resources and tools ensures the teamwork can be as good virtually as it is in-person. Overall, we believe we are better connected no matter, we are in the office or not.
Effective Communication
Having the protocols defined for connecting with teammates and clients reduces communication mishaps, often faced in an impromptu distributed environment. We are relying on communication software like Slack and Zoom call where work is more organized, and we can message an individual, the entire team, or even small group, share files, provide updates, receive organization-wide announcements and many more.
Efficient Project Management
We have been operating in an agile mode ensuring Continuous delivery at a rapid rate. Scrum Masters ensures employees get assistance whenever they require it. Updating the project progress and status on project management tools like Jira provides real-time visibility on how resources handle the project.
With a hierarchical escalation matrix, Clarion ensures that the concerns will be addressed faster. With daily huddles, our managers can know if employees are actually working in a remote environment. Every day, each team member mentions his update about what they did yesterday, what they are planning for today and blockages if any that affects the progress.
Our Contingency Plan for Uninterrupted Deliveries
- The continuous support of IT and administration teams to solve any challenges faced during remote work. Logging of all the requests/problems in the IT helpdesk helps to foresee issues and resolve them across projects.
- Considering the wellbeing of a sick employee who is unable to continue his services for short term, Clarion will provide a replacement resource.
- Clarion ensures the knowledge transfer for such backup resources, which will be performed seamlessly. The cost of knowledge transfer and training will be borne by Clarion.
There are multiple levels of Protection approaches; we are practicing at our workplace to retain its safety. One common practice is allowing employees to work from home. The above-mentioned are ways by which we are maintaining momentum and ensuring not to miss deadlines. Our remote work structure has truly allowed us to retain its productivity even during these turbulent times of distress.
We are proof that virtual employee culture does work and can be fruitful!
