It has been 18 days today, since the Prime Minister called for a complete lockdown, continuing with our series on how the industry is coping with the lockdown. The recent outbreak of the COVID – 19 has caused a tectonic shift in most people’s lives. There are so much stress and anxiety about job losses, loneliness, and other factors.
In this situation, all of us are working for home, and we Indians are not used to this scenario. But we have coped well, MediaNews4U continuing the series on, ‘Stay Positive’ spoke to Leaders in various sectors on how they are motivating their teams in dealing with this crisis
Govind Mahadevan Founder & CEO at Look Who’sTalking, says, “It’s a lockdown. Thankfully, all of us are safe at home for now, but what about the work we do? The next few days, and maybe months, will be quite challenging and it’s high time to prepare ourselves for the same. Because life stops at nothing and such is the case with this fast-paced industry. In the light of this unforeseen situation, Look Who’s Talking has decided to offer its full support to the industry in every way possible. Yes, we are working from home.
The same work from home that used to be a luxury has now become our lifestyle in these testing times. But this won’t stop us from being productive in an industry that functions 24*7, come what may. So here we are, putting up a fight against the pandemic and for the unending love of what we do – advertising.
The morning begins with all of us filling our job lists on the shared sheet. Thank you, Google!
Then we ‘Hangout’ to make sure that the isolation doesn’t take a toll on our mental health. Looking at each other and knowing that we are safe, is a wonderful feeling in these uncertain days.
Work, mail, call, WhatsApp and repeat. That’s how we are all making sure that things aren’t hampered.
Sometimes we share a cup of tea or that 4 pm smoke over the video call, and it feels better.
And when we come back from this indefinite yet hopefully-brief hiatus, we shall all be stronger, with a newfound sense of affection for the industry that we are so badly missing from home right now. That’s when we will take that long-awaited trip. The entire LWT Tribe, working together, from the distant hills or an isolated beach. Only this time, the isolation will be out of sheer joy, and not fear!”
Gaurav Wadhwa, Co-founder & CEO, Big Bang Music, says, “We decided to go ahead with WFH as a precautionary measure much before the government advisory. Flexible timing is allowing everyone to contribute to home tasks and spend some quality time with their family, while group video calls keep the team motivated and lets them engage with their colleagues regularly. We know it’s a challenging time, hence the day the PM made the announcement of complete lockdown, we ensured the team had their salaries with them so they could stock up on essentials and stay safe at home. The team is utilizing this time to focus on blue-sky thinking around building future strategies, which is allowing us to slow down and reflect on past work and learnings. Free yoga classes are also being conducted by celebrated yoga expert Ira Trivedi via google hangouts to keep people mentally and physically healthy.”
“Quarantine is a talking a toll on businesses and those working from home are also having it hard. Yes, it is hard to concentrate on work when the whole world is in crisis mode but startups like us are going the extra mile to use this time in a more productive manner. From Zoom calls to group chats, teams are constantly in touch with one another. The business might have gone down but we are taking this time to revamp, rethink and relook at our old process flows, our policies, our past work, spotting errors, coming up with solutions for the future and that’s not all, some of our employees have taken up online courses to upskill themselves. We might have not been prepared for this current situation but when things go back to normal — we are ready to spring right back into action. We were thinking less and doing more before all this, now we are doing less and thinking more. End of the day, all we need is a cup of chai to brew some positivity and hope. Stay safe and prepare yourself for the hopeful future because we are getting ready for it!”, said Sanil Jain, Co-founder, CupShup
