The Infanion HR team actions during Covid-19

The economic challenge with the emergence of Covid-19 (the Corona virus) has hit hard on every company and its employees. The pandemic capsized nearly every aspect of the work environment, with employees working from home and with skeletal staff in essential services allowed to work in the office. But, our employees and our management team (the Infanion We-Care team) tried to cope best as we have been agile and quick at adapting to such sudden changes in the past as well.

Which actions is the Infanion HR team taking to tackle Covid-19 challenges on the HR-front?

Our employees are our greatest asset and strength. And their safety is our utmost priority.  That’s why, even before any government directive to work from home was announced, we took already steps in our offices to facilitate work from home. We have the advantage that we are an internationally operating company, so we saw the impact of Covid-19 in European countries like Italy and Spain and immediately took several actions in the beginning of March.

To keep our employees safe and healthy and as a proactive step to minimize the spread of Covid-19, we started to implement early March work from home for different groups of employees. And by the time the governments imposed work from home, actually 95% of our employees were already working from home. So we were prepared.

But we knew that this is not the end, as work from home for months can also take a toll on the mental health of employees with stress, depression and anxiety building up. For the HR team, supporting our employees with coping on their mental health was our ethical obligation which required immediate attention.  

We are now into the seventh month we all are working from home.  In these 7 months, maintaining a productive healthy workforce was a big and difficult but certainly not an impossible challenge for the Infanion HR team. We started to think about how to create agility in our employees - assess the mood and productivity. So, our HR team started various employee assistance plans.

Unlocking creativity

• We started various team building activities with the ‘Corona unlocks creativity’- theme. Such activities add value by keeping the employees filled with ideatic energy in performing their best - also in their daily routine tasks.
• We also involve the minds of employees through quizzes in Lienion.

Keeping close contact

• We keep close contact with all the employees by way of phone call / text messages / Zoom / Skype / Whatsapp / G-meet. This task started with segregating them in 2 groups: 1. Isolated employees who were not staying with their families, and 2. Employees who were with their families.
• HR contacts and follows-up closely with isolated cases every day on their whereabouts, their health, their family members health, their team, their tasks, etc. HR counsels each individual on how to maintain good health and exercise habits. We also address their concerns in the daily management team meeting. While the regular cases are contacted on a weekly basis. They have of course daily contact with their colleagues in the respective teams, but this way we, as an HR team, also stay connected with our employees with close monitoring on their whereabouts.

Being a listening ear

• In order to become engaged with the work they do and the place in which they work, employees must feel comfortable. Our HR team tries to bring every possible comfort by addressing their concerns, be it health or family or work-related and with timely counseling.

Promoting the Covid-19 precautionary measures

• We continuously focus on communicating the various Covid-19 precautionary measures to be followed and respected when our employees need to step out of the house.

Keeping an open and transparent communication

• We are regularly organizing video calls over Zoom / G-meet with all employees and explain them how we tackle the Covid-19 challenges and how we are striving to keep us growing. In line with the IPLS™ core values, transparency is key in our communication.

The result?

We found a lot more openness in communication from employees with the HR-team, amongst their teams, and with the management. Even when everybody is working from home, this definitely has built a strong social bond.

At the end not to forget to mention that a well-balanced work-life is the key mantra to our success in this pandemic time.

Snigdha Maity
Head of Human Resources @ Infanion