Sidd Pagdipati is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of InventCorp, and the co-founder of Freedom Health (#7 on the Inc 500 2009) which was recently acquired by Anthem.
Q: What should I do during this time of crisis for my employee?
A: As I mentioned in a previous interview, most people are in distress about the impact the Coronavirus will have because all of us are in a situation that is beyond our control. Your employees might be feeling worried, uncertain, and scared as a result of the global pandemic. There is a wide array of reactions that people might have, some of them being emotional like mood swings and hyper-alertness, while some of them might be physical like a change in appetite, poor sleep, fatigue, and pains.
This is the time the leader in you should step up. Since being a leader isn’t just a job title, you should work towards helping those who are having a hard time adjusting. You need to ask your employees if there is anything that is distracting them and how they are feeling in general.
In 2001 Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson PLC sent an email to all 28,000 employees that said: Dear Everyone, I want to make sure you know that our priority is that you are safe and sound in body and mind. Be guided by what you and your families need right now. There is no meeting you have to go to and no plane you have to get on if you don’t feel comfortable doing it. For now, look to yourselves and your families, and to Pearson to help you any way we can. Marjorie. This powerful email so often used as an example of the principle of putting the emotional needs of others first.
You should show your employees that you care how they feel, that what they are experiencing is normal and that you understand them. If you make people feel heard and acknowledge their feelings, you will calm them down which will result in them being focused and getting work done.
Q: What advice do you have for other leaders who trying to run a business in a world on uncertainty?
A: Before you start implementing a plan, it would be a wise move to do crisis planning. What are you anticipating? Are your employees going to be able to work from home and keep the business going? Can you use Microsoft Teams or Zoom for meetings with partners and clients? In case you’re in manufacturing, what will be the impact of the crisis on the supply chain? Will you support your employees to handle their daycare if schools happen to close? You should draft a plan, discuss potential issues that might arise, and adapt the plan to them.
Q: How do I ensure stability in these disruptive times?
A: If you’re working with distributed teams, they will connect and communicate in very different ways than they did in-person. Using the same protocols you use in the office to regulate working remotely is not going to work. To remove confusion and uncertainty, the key is to be very clear on how work is going to be done. You will need to do weekly od daily check-ins to make sure that everyone is working towards your strategic goals since you can no longer manage the employees by walking around in the office. Also, a lot of your employees will be torn between working from home and handling childcare. Thus, meetings in the traditional sense might not make much sense. Given the circumstances, it is completely acceptable to have a toddler yelling in the background while you’re having a meeting with your employee. Lastly, you should decide on what tools are you going to use while working remotely. Minimize the number of apps you use, because you don’t want to waste your employee’s time by having them navigate between different apps. Decide which platform will all of you be using, will it be WhatsApp, Teams, Slack, or something else? Since you’re going to be talking via text, you need to over-communicate to lessen the risk of one of your employees misunderstanding you. What also creates accountability is video calls, because you can confirm that the person on the other side is present and listening to you.
Share the decisions you make and the information you have transparently. Encourage your employees to do the same. Even though you can’t see each other getting work done, you still need to share what is it that you’re working on. This will create trust and security among the team members.
Use the ongoing pandemic in your favor and build a flexible and account team with great work habits.
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