Business in the time of coronavirus

Sumeet Chander

I had wrapped up a very busy few weeks hosting almost 100 key leaders who attended our global leadership meet in Shanghai and was looking forward to a week’s rest during the Chinese New Year Holiday starting from January 24.

Then the news started pouring in that the virus which had been endemic to Wuhan was spreading across China. Hubei province – whose capital city is Wuhan – was under lockdown.

This outbreak could not have come at a worse time as pretty much all of China is on the move during the holidays. People go back to their homes across the country and a lot of people prefer to use these holidays for international travel.

Priorities

We quickly reached out to our local leadership group and as a group decided to have a clear set of priorities in this situation. Our most important priority is the safety of our entire team. We have a team of almost 350 people in the region and a lot of them were traveling.

We decided to take the following steps:

a. Tracking team members: All our managers started reaching out to their team members (primarily over WeChat – the most popular communication medium in China) to ascertain their well-being. We managed to reach all our people and started tracking them regularly (at least twice a week and in most cases almost daily.)

b. Reiterating basic preventive measures: We sent out mailers on preventive steps that our team members need to take.

c. Support: We offered all our team members any support that they needed during this critical juncture.

Next on the priority pecking order was the smooth resumption of work. We realized that a lot of our people would not be able to resume work at our office premises.

We started to make work from home arrangements for all the people. Our IT teams, administrative teams as well as Human Resource teams started kicking into high gear. We started testing all of these options even though we were supposed to be on a holiday.

We also realized that we needed to have additional medical supplies in our offices as and when we resumed work at our premises. The supplies of surgical masks, disinfectants (hand sanitizers/alcohol-based wipes etc.) and thermometers were needed to ensure a safe environment for all our returning employees.

Unfortunately, most of these supplies were running low in China. We reached our other global offices and started sourcing them through offices in the US, India, Chile and Romania.

What worked for us so far

We are still in the midst of the outbreak but I am glad to say that all our team members are safe. There are very few employees who are going to our office premises (8-10 people on a daily basis). The rest of them are working from their homes spread across the country, and some from outside China as well.

I am proud to say that we are working at 100 percent productivity and there have been minimal disruptions to our work. The commitment of our local team leaders and the team has helped ensure a smooth transition back to work.

There are multiple process factors that worked for us. Having the communication engine firing on all cylinders is a critical requirement in these situations. Right from the time we started getting the news, all the stakeholders were made aware of how everything was evolving and the steps we were taking.

The stakeholders included our global leadership team, local team, clients as well as global business continuity team (BCP) team. Our global leadership team gave us a carte blanche to take all the steps we needed to meet our priorities.

Our local leadership got in touch with all of their team members and let them know the steps that we were taking to take care of them. All our clients were kept informed of the evolving situation and were on-board with the steps that we were taking for their respective teams.

Another important process factor was business continuity planning. As an organization we always plan with different scenarios in mind. All the planning and mock exercises that we go through helped us during this situation.

Of course, this is still an evolving situation – we keep thinking of different scenarios in which this outbreak will unfold and keep on planning with these in mind.

Another important point is to accept that one cannot foresee all situations. However, one can be nimble-footed enough to adapt to different situations. A critical requirement is to have a local leadership team that one can rely upon to adapt to different scenarios and take decisions, which are in the best interest of the organization.

The future
Most of our team members are Chinese. As of now, the plan is to gradually move everyone back to our office premises. If things spiral downwards, we continue working from home as long as it is practicable.

We do have some people in Hubei (the province worst hit by the outbreak) – but they are also working from home. So, this model can continue for a while. As for expats, some of them have chosen to move out and work from their home countries. However, there are quite a few who are in Shanghai and continue working from home. At a personal level, my family is in Shanghai and we feel quite comfortable here.

Of course, as a service firm, it is a bit easier for us. There are different categories of other firms. Civic necessity firms (hospitals, local government etc.) that have been working at a frenetic pace. Then there are firms which provide daily necessities – supermarkets etc. – they are open as well. Manufacturing firms catering to these two sectors are getting priority approvals to operate.

Manufacturing firms related to other areas are being allowed to resume partially/gradually, and I reckon they intend to go back to full capacity in a couple of weeks. Even in these firms, office workers are working from homes.

The government, central as well as local, has been trying to walk a tightrope in terms of quarantine as well as economic activity. I do feel, and hope, that a lot of them should be back full steam soon.

Of course, many MNCs are rethinking their supply chain back-ups – we will see some alternative locations being set up in the near future. The alternative locations will vary per the industries. However, China would still continue to be the location of choice with alternative locations as back-ups.

We do hope that we are able to come out of this situation without any substantial issues. At the same time, we do believe that the Chinese economy will bounce back from this shock. The human cost has been immense and we hope it does not happen again.

Meanwhile, I see China being shown in extremely negative light on a lot of TV channels and other social media such as WhatsApp forwards. Quite frankly – the government has done a great job managing the outbreak. The steps that they have implemented would not have been possible anywhere else at this scale.

As for my much longed-for break – it will have to wait till we come out of this situation.

Sumeet Chander is Country Head – Greater China for Evalueserve, a leading analytics partner that helps companies with management and business processes across all functions.