Many are referring to the new way of work as the “new normal” as companies come to terms with having to split their workforces across working from home or from the office and having many not working at all.  
 
Our roles as the management team have changed frequently, having to shift quickly from focusing on long-term future strategy to short-term immediate solutions.   Every situation we have been challenged with has been unique, be it co-ordinating and relocating teams from the office to their homes, ensuring they are each set-up with the right equipment to function optimally, supplying them with data, to re-assuring stressed and concerned Clients we have the situation, and their call centre operations, under control.
 
Logistic management has become important as we have had to change or develop new Policies and Procedures, adaptive to our new operating environments, with a key focus on asset tracking.    
 
Amendments to our Business Continuity Plans and keeping our clients even more informed has become a necessity for continued trust-building.  We have become more inter-connected and collaborative than ever before.  
 
Even though our focus has been on achieving a successful role out of WFH agents, and ensuring their overall welfare, we never compromised on our contractual obligations and on achieving KPI’s.

This time has resulted in an increase in interactions across Management teams and our teams as a whole.  This has involved having to understand when to be business-like, and when to ease up and talk about family and the challenges presented by the COVID-19 situation.  
 
Zoom chats are by their very nature more superficial resulting in daily interactions with the leadership team becoming more caring, nurturing, and personal. This entailed being sensitive to how each team member is feeling, become aware of their stresses, and sense the tensions, through observing changes in the tone of voice or by facial expressions.     Perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned is the use of humour to ease the mood. This is a challenging time for all of us emotionally, physically, and financially and it has become even more important to focus on our people - some of our team meetings do end up with us all dissolving into fits of laughter.