WFH helps employees learn new disciplines and cultures: Hiriyanna Kowshika, Capco

Capco is a global technology and management consultancy dedicated to the financial services industry. In India Capco employs almost 700 people across four locations - Bangalore, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Pune. It provides a broad range of business and technology transformation services to global financial services clients in the APAC region.

Here, Hiriyanna Kowshika, Partner & Head of India, Capco, talks about how the company is ensuring business continuity amidst Covid-19. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: What are the key initiatives taken by CAPCO in ensuring that business continues as usual?

Hiriyanna Kowshika: Although business continuity planning (BCP) situations are not new for us, and we have dealt with BCP situations at very short notice, sometimes within less than half a day, such situations do not usually run on for multiple weeks. The current situation with Covid-19 may last for at least a few weeks, but we are prepared for that.

As a matter of policy, we issue laptops to all our employees on induction, so we are effectively automatically configured for remote working in terms of our infrastructure, though sometimes we have to address connectivity issues. Ultimately, we are very well-positioned to handle these scenarios and to take the decision to trigger remote working at the right time.

A significant proportion of our employees have client facing roles, which automatically brings in a sense of responsibility and ownership to manage their time and also client expectations, and to maintain self-discipline. Even while working at the office, our team members are likely to be engaging with global teams over video calls. Therefore, working remotely doesn’t really matter, so long as the right infrastructure is in place.

DQ: How is CAPCO addressing the challenges to ensure the work from home policy?

Hiriyanna Kowshika: Particularly, where you have long commuting times due to heavy traffic conditions, or require flexible working hours to cover clients in different time zones, working from home is an attractive option as the technology continues to improve to support it. The employees learn the disciplines and cultures of working from home, and use the added flexibility responsibly.

The potential downside, however, is minimized face-to-face team interaction and bonding, potential boredom, a lack of engagement with leadership and the wider organizational culture, and a reduction in opportunities to learn from one’s colleagues.

We ensure that we maintain a steady flow of communications from the senior team here in India as well as from our global leadership and global Human Resources team. The delivery leads on individual accounts are also connecting with their team members far more frequently, staying in touch to understand their challenges. Our India HR team are also on hand. Twice a week, they are sending out a bulletin focused specifically on tips and advice around physical and mental well-being, and are also running regular virtual employee focus group sessions.

In addition to that regular drumbeat of leadership and HR communications, we are also encouraging the employees to stay connected with each other, whether via our Microsoft Teams communities or Skype or WhatsApp. Specifically, we have introduced weekly 'Chai pe Charcha’ sessions to facilitate informal chats across teams. That type of less formal interaction is key to keeping people motivated and engaged in a remote working environment.

Our clients have always been very supportive of WFH because our employees continue to interact with them and maintain good visibility around the work that is being done. In the current unprecedented situation, there have been some instances where a response has taken a little longer, and we have seen some initial questions around data-sensitivity. But, we haven’t seen concerns around productivity or availability.

DQ: What are some of the key lessons learnt during the crisis situation?

Hiriyanna Kowshika: We went into this situation knowing that it was going to be vital to stay connected with one another, to stay on top of what’s going on in the news, and to move quickly and decisively to take whatever steps were required to support our people and our clients.

We knew we needed to stay focused on what is in front of us, to take things once step at a time and stay on mission. The importance of all those considerations has only been reinforced over the past month.

The cheap and reliable connectivity tools now available clearly make virtual interactions a far more viable proposition than was once the case. Of course, there are still obstacles around the availability and capacity of broadband and mobile services, which need to be addressed.

While this was already well recognized, these recent weeks have been a reminder that in a highly regulated industry like financial services, some activities require secure, high-speed networks and are subject to very stringent compliance rules that require more sophisticated monitoring and audit tools. Those requirements do not particularly lend themselves to remote working.

Looking at the bigger picture, my sense is that there will be a lasting shift in attitudes once we emerge from this pandemic, particularly if lockdown conditions are extended. When remote working arrangements are seen to have been effective, then, as a society, we have an opportunity to rethink what we mean by the ‘workplace’, with knock-on benefits not only to work-life balance, but also pollution and climate change. Striking a careful balance between work from office and WFH looks an ideal way to increase productivity, employee satisfaction and cost optimization.