Sourav SinhaWork from home amid Covid-19

12April

Work from home amid Covid-19

Covid-19 has created havoc across industries. There are various industries which are completely shut with no production at all. This has created a major problem with cash flows. Quite naturally for companies which are in Travel & Tourism, Hospitality (Hotels/Restaurants), Aviation etc., life has come to a complete stand still. I am not surprised to hear that multiple companies across various sectors have already laid down employees or have made significant cut on the pay packages.

This period of lockdown has pressed the reset button on many people’s lives. Life post Covid-19 won’t be the same again. I am very sure, people will understand that one can live with less. So, a fancy dress, a fancy car or an European holiday is not needed to keep one happy. This will also make people go more frugal. The lavish parties and exotic weekend getaways won’t be a “must have” part of life anymore. This would further effect the Travel, Aviation, Hospitality and Restaurant businesses.

With many businesses facing a severe rout and based on how the scenario is unfolding, many companies won’t be able to recover back to normalcy till 2021. This would also mean that we are staring at a huge job loss and this would effect the Indian and World economy in general. In my frequent discussions with friends and cousins who are in the space of Aviation, Hospitality and Manufacturing/Construction domain, I can feel the anxiousness thats creeping in. As the lockdown period increases, its becoming very clear that many people in these industries will lose jobs. Most of the people in India is having some kind of EMIs be it a house, car or education/personal loans. Each passing day is making them nervous about how to survive. Unfortunately, Indian middle class today has no one to turn to. Much is for them to blame though. Trying to create a life by borrowing money is always risky and most middle class people are now faced with a major crisis.

I feel extremely lucky that I belong to IT industry. This is one industry which for the time being is 100% working from home. Its ofcourse a big question – for how long. If the client companies are facing cash crunch or their businesses are shut then the IT companies will suffer soon with lack of cash flow. But as I said, as of now we are being kept busy. Other than of the rush of leaving for office each day in the morning, rest of the day seems to be the same. Infact with Work From Home scenario, I am ending up being online more than 12-14 hours every day. One big advantage of saving time in travel has been that I am able to attend many webinars and online conferences every week. Though people from outside will always feel that life is cool with Work From Home, but ask the managers and business owners and you will find that things are not that simple. Managing staff remotely in not so easy and there are many challenges when it comes to work from home. More on that later.

One of the biggest challenges that we have faced over the past 10 days has been to provide remote system support. Atleast 5 of our software engineers had problems with their systems at home. Our System Admin staff tried to help through remote and telephonic support. Thankfully problems for a few were sorted but for one of them the hard disk crashed and nothing could be done. With client updates on the line, it was a frenetic one day to find out a solution. With lock down in place and people living so far off from office, it was very difficult to get her the spare laptop or spare PC. Finally an idea stuck and we must thank our Co-Founder & CEO, Mr. Asif Ahmed for this. One of our past acquaintance, who owns a car and drives for West Bengal Police was contacted and he was ready to help. He took his car and drove to one of our system admin’s place. They then came to our office, took the spare machine and drove back to the software engineer’s house and delivered the system. After one day of non-productivity, the software engineer is now back to full steam and working on projects. As the saying goes, “Tough Times Never Last, Tough People Do”.

All people who are working in the IT industry must consider themselves extremely lucky that all of us has full time work during this extended period of lock down. Believe me, I know people who are getting frustrated with no work. Quite naturally, life had become a race and all were running. Now suddenly everything has come to a halt. Its very difficult for people to keep themselves busy for extended period, staying at home. Hence, people in IT industry should count their blessings and continue doing what they are best at and that is to remain humble and keep delighting the customers!

Stay Safe! Stay Healthy! God Bless!

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