Please review and comment below case analysis.
Leadership and Crisis Management during Covid19Pandemic
Joy works as a project leader in XYZ company and manages servicedelivery for his client. It is critical to ensure continuity ofbusiness operations, so he had proactively planned and establisheda primary and secondary delivery centers. If one of his deliverycenter is down due to natural or manmade disaster or event, he willbe able to continue delivery from alternate site. Joy leads a teamof 200 people, equally spread among primary and secondary deliverycenters and each of the team members work on a desktop located in afixed workstation.
Client has always been happy about Joy's performance for hiscompetency at work, people management and leadership skills. Onefine day, a COVID like situation evoked across the world and clientgets into a force majeure situation like none of the deliverycenters are functional and cities across the continents were lockeddown, at a very short notice.
Client approached Joy to find a solution and ensure continuityof critical services during this lock down situation. Joyimmediately sets up a conference call with his managers and joltsdown the limitations for setting the shop up and running.
City is locked down so, there are no transport facilities foremployees to reach workplace. Employees have a fixed desktop andworkstation so do not have an alternative solution. Government hasdeclared paid holidays during this pandemic situation, so fewemployees are reluctant to continue work.
Generally, the government will have a big say in this. They aregoing to allow the relaxation of the lockdown in a phased manner.As a leader, Joy going to have to really go through a series ofsteps to ensure that complying with those government guidelines,but at the same time, ensuring that people are safe, and are ableto be active as well, because at the end of the day, he need themto run a business.
He thoroughly brainstorms on the solutions for each of the aboveproblem statements and approaches client to provide a remotedesktop solution to enable team members work from home, he seeksclient permissions and gets a non-disclosure agreement signed fromhis team members to achieve client confidence on data security.
As few of the resources are reluctant to work from home, he setsa very clear expectation with client and does not over commit onwork deliverable. He approaches client stating that team will beable to delivery only 50% of the work given current challenges inthe lock down situation, despite know the fact that all the teammembers have got a personal laptop.
In this time of crises, Joy communicate very clearly andtransparently all the important business scenarios. Proactivecommunication within the team and with the clients help to reduceloss for the company and build brand reputation of its own. InCrisis each expense kept in check by the company. The XYZ companyconsider the minimum operating requirements in case of crisis.Company workforce should always be retained in such times. Theimpact of crisis may tend to continue hence multiple scenarios, allpossible solution should be found out by the company.
He set up a daily meeting with his entire span of control with200 people to keeps them motivated with performance incentives andkeeps a check on their wellbeing. His people management andleadership skills have helped the entire teamwork from home in lessthan 24 hours. Client has appreciated Joy and team for dedicatedlysupporting and ensure there is no impact on businessoperations.
As a leader Joy assure the people to be strong and don’t panicto the disease and fight against the infection. He able to explainand inform that he handles the issue if there is a support andencouragement from the people. He engages and make them follow therules and regulations that are important to follow in thissituation. The precautions and process steps to stay away from theinfected need to be informed to avoid the spread of the disease.The control steps and actions that the Joy is taking to control thedisease need to communicate to the people to make them understandwhat the company is doing to handle the situation. For instance,Joy communicate with his team weekly basis, to get know problemteam facing work from home and arrangement for help or support inorder to accomplish task as plan. Company XYZ has launchedapplication of Temperature Recording & Health Declaration forall employee. Therefore, Joy encourage use this application torecord body temperature twice daily. With this data, he manageskeep track health condition of this people.
Precaution is better than cure is the only way we can controlthe infection of Corona virus. As there is no proper medicine andenough medical kits in most of the countries the social distanceand lockdown are the only solution. Joy are the drivers to drivethe people in a right way to stay at home and stay safe. Companymanagement actively work to control the spread of rumors throughsocial media which is more dangerous than the disease. Becausepanic brings fear in the people that is more dangerous than thedisease. Thus, company send daily email referring to accurate datafrom Ministry of Health with current nationwide condition Covid19.The positive information through data collection released tounderstand what company is trying to control the pandemic. Alsoincludes the actions that development of vaccination to control theinfection. Joy work towards to make the necessary goods availableto the people through leading them in a right way. Joy daily basisinteract and communicate the valuable information and precautionmeasure steps to boost some confidence.
