Covid-19 leading to a paradigm shift in globe's operations

Vinay Bhartia, India Head, Lark, gives tips to both individuals and corporates on how to survive the Covid-19 crisis and talks of the sea changes that it is bringing in the way the world operates.

What are the tips you have to survive lockdowns like these and how do you personally cope?

With the Covid-19 virus outbreak intensifying globally, it has not only disrupted the way we work, but it has also made the lines of work and life blurry. Hence, it is essential to maintain a work-life balance. Some of the tips that I personally follow include:

• Plan my day: It’s important that I plan and follow the schedule properly during the day and have time for myself as well. Following a proper regime is vital to remain active and productive. Getting up and finishing my day as I would in office are also important.
• Keep a health check: while we are busy with our everyday work, remaining mentally alert and healthy is very important. Therefore, I engage myself with a good level of physical activities like Yoga or home-based workouts that helps me remain positive and bring a healthy perspective in life
• Stay connected: we often forget to stay in touch with our closed ones as we are surrounded by so much work. Hence, the foremost thing I do is to reach out to my colleagues, friends, family and ensure to follow this habit during this lockdown. Staying connected with them, talking about day-today activities, expressing thoughts are a healthy way to reassure that we all are in this together and we can do better, if we are together.

Do you think WFH will greatly increase once this lockdown is over, or will it reach pre-lockdown levels?

The work from home option has come to employees due to an unprecedented situation but it is bringing a cultural shift in India. With an increased millennial population in the workforce, the transition has been seamless. Their acceptance towards virtual communication platforms has ensured business continuity and enhanced productivity.

The lockdown is preparing the corporates to take a leap towards digitization and pave a way for a paradigm shift in their operations. It will help them in accepting remote working options and consider it as a viable alternative for employees whenever necessary. Also, it can lead to cost savings, convenience and productivity gains, if implemented correctly. Once the lockdown is over, businesses will be more accepting to change and adopt this new style of working.

What tips do you have to help enterprises get the maximum out of their employees during their WFH periods?

With the Coronavirus outbreak across the world workplaces are shut to encourage social distancing. There can be some challenges while working remotely but with the right strategies, these can be mitigated. Identifying the right collaborative platform for the organisation is one such strategy. Organisations can opt for easy to use platforms which bring together various work tools to save time and enhance productivity. Some other tips that organisations can follow:

• Continue the routine: Organisations can ensure that all the employees follow their daily routine by logging in on time, giving e-attendance, submitting e-task list and filing in their timesheets
• Team Meetings: They can conduct daily team meetings and ensure that employees are participating and contributing in those meetings
• Daily deliverables: Can lay out clear guidelines for employees and highlight daily deliverables to help employees meet deadlines and check the maximum items of his/her task list
• Fixed Work Hours: It is important that the employees fix the working hours and do not extend it on a regular basis. Supervisors can also encourage them to take regular breaks and lunch breaks on time so that the employees can relax as well.

Do you see a cultural shift happening after the Covid-19 crisis ends?

The Covid-19 crisis has posed a great challenge in front of organizations and each organization is dealing with it in best of its capacity. The crisis has increased optimism towards business continuity during such unprecedented situations. This optimism is fueled by the availability of easy and effective means for remote collaboration has broken down the stigma around work from home. It will surely bring a fundamental cultural shift in most organizations. There will be a significant rise in acceptance towards adapting to work remotely, exploring new platforms to continue business operations and preparedness for the unpredictable. The learnings for businesses include resilience and capabilities to continue to deliver value while working remotely and keeping everyone safe. That will be an additional significant driver to get people to work from the comfort of their homes.

How does Lark differentiate itself from other collaboration tools and what extra is your company doing to help in today's current scenario?

Lark is a next generation all-in-one platform for collaboration that brings together a multitude of essential work tools, including Messenger, Online Docs and Sheets, Cloud Storage, Calendar, and Video Conferencing.

To help people and businesses in need, we recently announced that Lark, is available for free in India. As businesses around the world are rapidly responding to the COVID-19 outbreak with initiatives ranging from travel restrictions, mandatory work from home and remote learning policies, Lark bridges the gap as a robust, easy-to-use collaborative tool that helps people stay connected. The service is also extended for free to individuals, businesses & educational Institutes including, Schools, Colleges and Coaching Classes across India, enabling remote working between teachers and students that will effectively and rapidly manage workflow.

Lark's free version comes with unlimited video calls upto 100 participants, (with advanced screen sharing), 200GB of cloud storage, online collaborative docs and sheets, a smart calendar, a powerful messenger, unlimited third-party app integrations, and customizable attendance/approval workflows. These features are all synchronized so there is no longer any need to juggle between applications to get work done.