The work from home evolution

Is working from home (WFH) turning a profit centre into a cost centre?

One can say this has been a very interesting journey with great learnings and experimentation. COVID-19 forced many businesses to adopt a WFH strategy. Is working from home viable? Are we not turning profitable agents into agents getting paid to sit at home? We wish to begin our journey as follows: one had to adapt to a new style of doing things — from the office to working from home — very quickly. Through innovation, technology, and digital platforms, we quickly had to learn how best to achieve productivity equal to what we achieved in the office. The Digital Era has certainly started.

Having the majority of our workforce working from home was a daunting thought. We’ve evaluated, planned, and geared all security, operational, and technical challenges to enable working from home.Reality quickly taught us that WFH is not only a technical challenge — when you deal with people, you need to listen and respond quickly and meaningfully. We had to think differently about every process: how do we reward and recognise our staff now that we’re not together? How do we keep everyone informed about COVID-19 regulations and safety?

Several technical tools were developed — one being the JOC (Joint Operations Centre) — to help our workforce become more proactive in daily activities and manage productivity by the hour. We created Nimble University to empower staff to upskill themselves as needed. This tool is easily accessible and integrated with the Norman collections system. Staff are motivated as they have the privilege to work from home while still performing at an optimal level.

The work-from-home model has shown more advantages and engagement between staff and management. Agents are kept up to date with business communications through daily virtual meetings and one-on-one engagements via system chat. This maintains a sense of belonging between staff and the business. People are our biggest asset — co-creating a WFH solution helped Nimble ensure that everyone working from home is part of a team, pulling toward shared objectives, while enjoying more time and extra money in their pockets.

We are delighted with our rollout of WFH. As management, we had to shift gears from traditional methods to a new way of doing things. We continue to learn and improve WFH processes.

Remote working can benefit everyone — the company and its employees — but keeping the balance is important. The possibilities are endless.

Written by Operations Executives: Cathy O’Callaghan and Moeshfiqa Levy