It’s mid-week and work has piled up ceiling-high. The skies are like a non-functional zipper and the streets, a flowing river. You are debating with yourself whether you should ask your boss to let you work from home. While you are checking with your colleagues about the situation in their localities, you receive an SMS asking you to work from home.
An increasing number of organisations are acting with foresight to ensure their employees come out of natural calamities and other emergencies unscathed.
Cigna TTK Health Insurance with its 400-plus workforce spread across three facilities in Mumbai, has a ‘Rain Advisory Committee’. One of the responsibilities of the Committee is to monitor weather and forewarn employees about inclement weather conditions.
“This Committee was formed recently in response to the heavy rains lashing Mumbai and the collapse of the Andheri bridge,” says Reena Tyagi, chief human resources officer at Cigna TTK Health Insurance.
The team comprises seven members representing different functions and locations of the company. They help consolidate data, review situation and offer recommendations to the senior management.
The human resource department is often expected to drive emergency preparedness and response. However, there are now many organisations that believe in forming teams that will work as an extended arm of the HR department during calamities and other emergencies.
Change champions
At Samsung offices across the country, 120 ‘Change Champions’ serve as the voice of the employees.
Chosen by business heads, they are given the responsibility of driving employee engagement programmes across teams.
Besides this work, they are expected to take charge of a situation during an emergency. In 2016, for instance, when hundreds of motorists across Gurugram were stranded for hours, some of these change champions swung into action. They informed the management about the situation and suggested that the office buses leave early at 4 p.m. Hitting the road later would have meant employees had to deal with the additional problem of rush-hour traffic.
A 7,000-member team
DHL Express has established a network of 7,000 trained employees who serve as volunteers of its Disaster Response Teams in the United States, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions. This group also responds to any call for support the United Nations may issue during an emergency.
Under what is called ‘GoHelp’, these employees are trained to insulate airports against possible damage, in disaster-prone regions.
“We collaborate with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to conduct workshops for personnel at airports and local disaster management organisations. The workshop covers how to meet the logistical challenge of a disaster relief effort and dispatch and process large volumes of incoming relief supplies,” says R.S. Subramanian, country manager, DHL Express India.
He points out that a ‘Get Airports Ready for Disaster’ programme was conducted at the Guwahati International Airport in 2015 and Chennai International Airport in 2016.
Monsoon drill
Pooja Bajaj, who runs an employee engagement firm in Mumbai, has reached out to more than 60 companies asking them to initiate a monsoon drill.
“It’s on the same lines as a fire drill,” says Bajaj, founder, Extra Mile. She asks companies to make a check list to ensure things like medical supplies, food, power back-up are in place. The usually-ignored matters such as tie-ups with guest houses and cab services are also to be taken care of. As part of the drill, design posters at washrooms and other parts of the office to tell employees what to do when faced with problems resulting from a heavy monsoon.
“In many organisations, information is not communicated properly. By having a contingency plan and communicating it to employees, offices can encourage them to come to work,” says Bajaj.
A backup plan
Chennai-based predictive supply chain startup FourKites had to have its team working from Hyderabad for close to two weeks during the Chennai floods of 2015. Since then the company has introduced various measures to deal with emergencies. Besides an active Employee Response Team, it has a backup plan, which includes a tie-up with a cab service. There is merit in preparing employees for a rainy day.
“Having a contingency plan ensures business continuity and demonstrates an organisation’s concern for its employees,” says Neeraj Sharma, senior director, HR, FourKites.
