Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Indian information technology service outsourcing is facing an unprecedented challenge to support businesses globally without letting their employees step out of their homes. And even as these companies support business-critical functions across sectors, including healthcare, banking, and backend IT for government services, their focus currently is on maintaining continuity of essential services in addition to ensuring employee well-being.

Now it is important for Tech Mahindra to look into how client security measures need to be re-evaluated to address the new work from home normal.

“This pandemic has pushed businesses across sectors to work from home. So we have relaxed our work from home policy and are encouraging associates to avail of the option,” said CP Gurnani, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Tech Mahindra.

IT business falls under essential/emergency services and the operations of these IT companies are taking place in accordance with the government’s advisories and directives.

For Tech Mahindra, which largely services the communication industry, however, the initial impact of coronavirus in China meant looking at what the rest of the world was soon to follow in terms of their supply chain and infrastructure requirements.

“Much before the lockdown (across global sites), we conducted mock drills to address the situation better and deployed 20 task forces working to ensure that we are ready to mitigate any health or safety risks,” said Gurnani.

So while China was fighting covid-19 fiercely, it was business as usual for Tech Mahindra from its offices in China except for its centre in Wuhan, where operations had been suspended during the lockdown.

The operations of Tech Mahindra was on full swing in centres like Shanghai and Beijing. Its own offerings such as Workplace as a Service (WaaS) and Work from home call centre application have helped the company in maintaining continuity of work.

So we see new focus areas emerging thanks to this lockdown? Gurnani predicts that this phase in everyone’s life will mean an increased focus on technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality among others going forward.

“The impact of the current crisis is still not known as the situation remains volatile. With the larger workforce working from home, we are expecting to see an uptake on cloud services, cybersecurity, and data security. The current circumstances may also accelerate the adoption of 5G to meet the demands of bandwidth, performance, and network slicing,” he said.

Apart from this, other areas which see a boost include e-learning, online education, e-governance, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, IoT-based (Internet of Things) solutions of various kinds.

But that is the future. For now, the company, as many others in the sector is focusing on keeping employees motivated.

Tech Mahindra is encouraging its managers to regularly check-in on their teams to identify morale issues and help them fix these immediately. In addition, wellness partners and internal learning teams conduct virtual programs with associates on how to reduce anxiety and working around uncertainty.

“We are also conducting sensitization programs for managers to help them cope with stress of managing workforce remotely and effectively as these are unprecedented times,” said Gurnani.