IT staffing and consulting Archives

Covid19 Crisis: Inspiring Innovations

Category: Business, HealthCare, IT staffing and consulting, Management

“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable”. – William Pollard

The Covid Pandemic has dented the spirit of the world leaving it in a state of weltschmerz. In the unprecedented crisis, all the countries are coming up with their ideas and innovations to collaborate among themselves and combat the deadly pandemic. Let’s look at some of the ways by which low and middle income countries are working together towards effective remediation of this Pandemic.

The effective usage of mobile phone communication has resulted in improved data collection, reporting and better communication between healthcare staff, frontline workers, clinicians to take proactive steps in controlling the widespread transmission of covid against low and middle income countries. Use of ticketing apps for harnessing passenger data in public transport in Kenya has helped in contact tracing and forecasting future clusters. This has also helped in sending a deterrent to passengers and limiting the number of commuters to prevent community spread. These approaches are not only simple but also sensitive to social and cultural ethos of the people and have been successful despite resource crunch.

The first line of defence consists of people who are involved in detection, prevention and controlling the infection. Vietnam has come up with an innovative idea of making use of robots for cleaning the hospitals and formation of special groups for distribution for food and help items to the vulnerable sections of the society. These measures have not only controlled the infection at large but also helped in reducing the impact of lockdown and restrictions. The routine health monitoring systems developed in South Africa are being reinvented to monitor pandemic response and track vaccination distribution in different countries.

Re-engineering existing resources in the intensive care unit of Saudi Arabia has helped in workforce optimization and reducing workflows resulting in better efficiency and turn around time. Tasks which require specific skill sets have been earmarked and resources deployed based on current demand. Specialists have been identified to carry out the tasks cut out for them which helps in unlocking human potential. Despite an increase in patient frequency clinicians could provide adequate care and respond to their medical requirements seamlessly thanks to the proactive steps taken towards restructuring.

User centric approach is giving way to driven methodologies resulting in better business outcomes and value generation. Any crisis presents itself with hidden opportunities that need to be unearthed for deriving the benefits for society and building a competitive edge. The need for personal protective equipment was identified by a network of enterprises in Mumbai who collaborated with others in the market and delivered more than one million safety masks within a short span of time to meet the demands of healthcare providers and end users. This is a good example of bottom of the pyramid innovation through creation of prototype and service delivery.

New age techniques like data modelling have played a significant role in prognosis of the pandemic and developing strategies for accelerating the responses for control and resilience. Countries like Rwanda which is strapped with resource constraints have come up with new data driven pool testing methods which has helped in reduction of the number of tests required to narrow down on the infection count. Analytics and data comparison have also been effective in India for control of spread in large states with the help of low-cost paper based tests carried out in mobile labs.

Conclusion

We at Newlineinfo Corp are committed to our fight against Covid and support the geographies in which we operate through social inclusivity and innovative management practices.

Working From Home: Is it making us paranoid?

Category: Business, IT staffing and consulting, Leadership, Work From Home

“People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses or the problems of modern society.”- Vince Lombardi

Easily a juggernaut in the current times, the Covid Pandemic has transformed the modus operandi of the corporate world and businesses are fast embracing new ways of working to adapt to this sea change. Remote working has made geographical boundaries and social demographics less significant thanks to far-fetched digital outreach. However, it has also given rise to social isolation resulting in negativity, a sense of disbelief leaving the digital workforce paranoid. Let’s look at some of the ways by which Work From Home Paranoia can be managed effectively.

Due to lack of personal interaction and social cues, it is important that business leaders and managers stay connected with their team members in remote working. The C-level team needs to keep the communication channel open to foster a culture of openness and transparency. Employee grievances need to be heard with an open mind and adequate measures need to be taken for remediation and redressal. This world helps in maintaining a healthy relationship with team members and provides them developmental feedback for better performance and enhanced productivity.

Setting the expectations clearly with the team members and managers would go a long way in building trust and creating a platform for a mutually rewarding relationship. People would start to acknowledge their shortcomings and learn to align themselves to the organizational goals through positive engagement and collaboration. Invoking active participation from all team members would help in breaking the silos and generate creative ideas for process improvements and building efficiency measures.

Digital adoption has opened the floodgates for exhaustive meetings through new age tools like video conferencing, Skype meetings, podcasts, webinars etc. Scheduling the meetings based on their importance and delegating the not so important tasks to the other team members can help in freeing up quality time which can be used effectively. Managing meetings with the availability of all team members would help in delivering key messages and promote remote inclusion. Proactively managing scope creep is essential to avoid staff dissatisfaction and burn out.

Conclusion

Overtly personalising other people’s actions can lead to frustration and emotional disruption. Respecting differences and developing a sense of empathetic understanding towards others opinions would help in emotional catharsis resulting in positive remote relationships. Maintaining a good work life balance and spending a quality time with friends and family would help in emotional rejuvenation and recharge. Leverage on innovative people engagement techniques like casual no agenda meetings through virtual coffee and lunch sessions for socialisation and better team bonding. This would be a stress buster and provide the much needed respite from bone-dry routine and mundane interactions. We at Newlineinfo Corp have good work ethics and we are committed to the well being of our employees. We demonstrate an attitude of care and concern for our staff through inclusivity, team bonding and empathetic understanding.

Ways to Improve Virtual Methods of Working and Adapt to the New Normal

Category: IT staffing and consulting, Leadership, Management

“Giving employees great autonomy and flexibility allows people to feel independent and empowered while still feeling like a part of something bigger. This leads to happy, loyal employees with a rich quality of life, which in turn leads to an amazing culture.” ― Larry English

The unrelenting pandemic has ushered in new ways of working, capable of delivering far reaching benefits in the future in order to tide over this crisis and move towards flexible working models to remain competitive in the digital landscape. In this process, it’s not uncommon to find that the employees get fatigued due to digital overdose resulting in feeling of isolation and negativity. Let’s look at some of the ways by which zoom fatigue can be remediated with the help of virtual collaboration.

New techniques like webinars, podcasts, video conferencing have shrunk the geographical boundaries through digital enablement. Businesses need to revisit their recruitment strategy and leverage on candidate skills irrespective of their work location. Brainstorming with people from different cultures and backgrounds can churn out creative ideas promoting inclusive growth and resulting in enhanced productivity. Employees would feel more emotionally connected when they feel that their voice is heard and realise that the organisation is inclined towards addressing the challenges that they face. Reimagining the workspace would help in creating multiple communication channels that would help in understanding the concerns of staff and taking quick actions to address them appropriately.

Investing in the well being of staff would remain critical in times of uncertainty. Companies need to focus on people engagement initiatives and demonstrate care and commitment towards their staff. Managers need to reinforce a spirit of togetherness and a sense of belonging amongst their team members. Conducting wellness programs through video conferencing, having informal chats, water cooler conversations would create positive vibes for good physical and mental health. Having regular one to one sessions with staff helps in establishing a personal connect with staff for providing constructive feedback for growth and development. It would also help in providing reassurance and defenestrate any unfounded fears regarding job loss and career.

Conclusion

Carrying out well being surveys would help in knowing the pulse of team and employee experience. Deploying crowdsourcing tools would help in getting valuable insights relating to employee exhaustion. This would help in addressing the issues faced by larger sections of the organisation and take dedicated efforts to alleviate employee pain points. Companies need to use this cautiously to be wary of any unconscious bias that would impact effective decision making. Given that the work environment is constantly evolving, leaders need to be agile in handling change and find ways to adapt to the dynamic needs of the future. Virtual working and collaboration helps businesses to become more adaptable and resilient in the event of business disruption due to uncertainty. We at Newlineinfo Corp have an engaged team willing to go the extra mile in meeting customer expectations through state of the art technologies and digital innovation.

Remote Working : Staying connected

Category: IT staffing and consulting, Leadership, Management, Uncategorized

“Starting with trust and giving employees great autonomy and flexibility allows people to feel independent and empowered while still feeling like a part of something bigger. This leads to happy, loyal employees with a rich quality of life, which in turn leads to an amazing culture.”― Larry English

Covid19 pandemic has ushered in a new era of working from home which has resulted in digitizing the employer employee relationship. People have started feeling a sense of isolation and loneliness due to dwindling social interaction and human connection. Companies need to look at different ways of reinventing themselves to cope with this challenge to mitigate the impact of remote working and build a collaborative workplace for the future.

To feel comfortable and stay motivated during WFH, companies need to look at providing the infrastructure support required for employees to create a virtual office environment at their work location. Creation of online forums for community building for sharing their posts and updates would help in staying connected preventing burnouts. Having virtual coffee sessions and water cooler talks helps in taking a break from work and socializing with other team members.

The leadership team needs to demonstrate a culture of empathy and connect with their teams to provide support and motivation for keeping the employee engagement levels intact. The communication between the senior management and the employees needs to be maintained on an ongoing basis for providing regular updates about the pandemic and the steps taken to handle it proactively. This would result in sustaining a stress free environment at the workplace by promoting inclusivity and a sense of personal concern. A centralized platform or information hub containing all the critical information about covid19 response along with company policy and procedures needs to be shared with all the staff for disambiguation and positive assurance.

Businesses need to work on making realistic plans for bouncing back from challenges and staying resilient during crisis situations by leveraging on social capital. Upskilling the workplace and allocation of resources based on business requirements would help in reducing the overload at work resulting in effective utilization of resources. This Will also help in improving the work life balance of employees by allowing them more free time with their kith and kin resulting in better personal and mental well being. Rewarding the efforts of employees who demonstrate a positive attitude and willing to take the extra mile to support their colleagues will go a long way in building a healthy relationship at the workplace and creation of high performance teams.

Despite remote working there is a need for employees to stay connected digitally without much supervision. Businesses need to foster a culture of trust and openness to achieve the desired results and business outcomes by empowering their workforce. Creation of focus groups conducting fun filled activities like online puzzles, quizzes, brainstorming and groupthink would result in enhancing the creativity and boosting the performance levels of employees. To break free from rigidity and bring an element of fun and heightened interaction, meetings can be made more interactive with specific agenda and sticking to committed timelines. Invoking participation from all the attendees will make them feel more socially connected helping them to vent their feelings without any inhibitions. Since the workforce is scattered across different locations in remote working, setting specific goals and metrics would be critical to track and measure the results.

Conclusion

We at Newlineinfo Corp have an engaged team capable of delivering sustainable business solutions to our customers through digital transformation and enablement.

Customer Experience: Trends to Watch for in 2021

Category: Artificial Intelligence, Business, IT staffing and consulting

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Businesses continue to vie with each other in the competitive market place through emerging trends to delight their customers and increase their profitability. Let’s look at some of these new trends that can create a lasting impact in terms of customer loyalty by optimising customer experience.

Assess Customer needs

Business leaders need to assess the customer profiles and redefine them based on the customer needs and expectations. Deployment of design thinking and data driven analytics helps in pre-empting customer demands resulting in innovation of new products. The prototype created by quantitative research and ethnographic studies can be used to identify customer trends and patterns that help in building robust business cases for determining the most treasured customer experience. Digital transformation in business strategy helps in developing a road map for leveraging the capabilities of digital technologies like AI and responding proactively to the dynamic needs and requirements of customers.

Companies are constantly reinventing themselves for speeding up their plans to deliver superior product offerings and becoming more digitally accomplished by revving up the prioritized experiences. C level leaders need to focus on valuable insights and feedback provided by agents, customer service teams to develop a robust customer experience strategy for customer retention and growth. The think tank needs to review their ROI on a regular basis based on customer insights with a sustained focus on building trust and revenue generation.

Adopt Omnichannel Startegy

Stepping up omnichannel strategy will result in deepening the customer connection across multiple channels and helps in understanding the choices and customer behaviour. Engaging the customers through web, voice, e-mail channels would help in staying seamlessly connected across the customer journey and having personalised interactions with them at every touch point. This provides a sustainable advantage by streamlining customer services for building long term customer relationships. Resolution of customer queries based on priority would help in eliminating the pain points resulting in better customer satisfaction scores. Reimagining customer experience helps in transforming customer interactions into personalised experience resulting in heightened brand loyalty and advocacy.

Customer choices and preferences

Businesses need to focus on predictive analytics for maintaining a competitive edge and customer retention. It also helps in understanding the potential threats and flight risks by identifying the key factors leading to churn. Customer choices and preferences can be understood based on product feedback and products can be tailored to suit the customer interest. Predictive analysis also helps in managing the operations better by deploying the right amount of resources for handling customer traffic based on volume teen. The usage of integrated data lakes and customer data platforms helps in identifying customer interventions and provide enhanced end customer experience.

Training

Employees need to be provided proper training for handling customer interactions effectively and be passionate about serving their clientele. Empowering the employees and rewarding them for positive outcomes will go a long way in boosting their morale that keeps them motivated for developing customer centric vision and delivering customer excellence.

Conclusion

We at Newlineinfo Corp have a customer centric team committed to providing top notch services to our customers through digital transformation and innovation.

VR set to transform Learning on the Job?

Category: Business, IT staffing and consulting, Mobile

“Productivity depends on many factors, including our workforce’s knowledge and skills and the quantity and quality of the capital, technology, and infrastructure that they have to work with.”- Janet Yellen

Businesses have realised the importance of Virtual Reality and the benefits derived from carrying out learning and development of their staff by leveraging on its far-reaching benefits and advantages. VR provides for simulated learning scenarios enabled through usage of mobile telephony, standalone headset and desktops using high end computer devices.

Virtual Reality has become a game changer for companies to engage staff and boost productivity levels through responsive learning and continuous improvement. New technologies like eye tracking software, biometrics and brainwave monitoring have enabled companies to closely monitor the progress of employees and institutionalise scalable modern training methodologies aided by VR for better knowledge retention and enhanced employee engagement at a reduced cost.

Soft skills like public speaking, negotiation, selling and networking hardly find a place in the education system and these enterprise skills are high in demand for jobs requiring client interaction and decision making. VR helps in upskilling the workforce through Integrated learning with traditional methods and provides a platform for learning via simulated environments. VR has made remote learning possible eliminating the need for in-person training without compromising on interpersonal connection. Managers can monitor the performance of employees online and provide developmental feedback to their employees for improvement.

VR helps in simulating spaced repetitions of random workplace scenarios that reduces the employee learning curve significantly. This helps in getting the employees future ready with the necessary skill sets that are transferable and sensitising them in potential real life scenarios with the help of effective learning experience.

VR also helps in identifying talent and reducing the time taken to on board new candidates through smarter recruitments. When a large number of candidates need to be interviewed. VR enables online interaction and helps in assessing the aptitudes and skill levels of the candidates precisely to identify the right candidate within a shorter span of time. VR provides greater flexibility and attracts the talent across the globe through new recruitment strategies like taking a virtual reality tour of the workplace, immersive on the job Virtual Reality job experience, fun filled onboarding process.

VR technology will also aid the employees interact with their sales prospects and customers effectively across multiple geographies by collaborating them in different time zones that helps in delivering better results. Experiential learning through VR can help employees achieve greater success in customer service through cross selling customisation and product simulation.

Conclusion

We at Newlineinfo Corp constantly strive to deliver customised digital solutions through enhanced employee engagement and Customer Focus.

Performance Evaluation in a pandemic: Is this still on?

Category: Business, IT staffing and consulting, Others

“In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.” – Bill Gates

Performance Evaluation is a critical activity that provides a great opportunity to the manager and the employee to reflect on the achievements and learning. In a pandemic situation like COVID 19, it’s a daunting task to conduct a fair and free performance evaluation without leaving room for any kinds of bias.

Managers need to put on their thinking hats and needless to say have an open conversation with the employees for an effective performance evaluation especially during this pandemic situation. Here are some of the ways by which this can be achieved, for a mutually rewarding experience.

Role Clarity

Laying out a well defined performance evaluation criteria along with a clear direction on role clarity would help employees deliver their performance goals resulting in enhanced productivity. Performance metrics can be used to measure these criteria that would add a lot of value towards maximising employee contribution and enhanced business outcomes.

Evaluation Criteria

The think tank needs to have common viewpoints on the skills set that would be required to achieve the business goals in a crisis situation. Employee performance needs to reviewed in conjunction with the competencies that would be required to deliver the desired results. Managers need to align their evaluation criteria to have a standard approach towards a performance review and assessment.

Having regular appraisal discussions with employees would go a long way in maintaining the emotional connect with the people that would allay the cobwebs of fear and anxiety lurking in the minds of the employees during pandemic situations. The evaluation criteria needs to be monitored consistently against the performance goals and managers need to be empowered for decision making based on the framework of performance evaluation. This would also help in keeping the staff morale high through open and transparent communication and would help keep any unconscious bias under check.

Redefining Objectives

Reviewing the existing roles and redefining the role requirements would go a long way in tiding over crisis situations. Identifying high performers and loading balancing across the different business functions based on the strategic intent would result in talent churn by unlocking hidden potential.This can be a critical tool for providing opportunities for employees to build on skill sets for vertical and horizontal growth and creating mobility within the organisation.

We at Newlineinfo Corp strive consistently towards achieving business excellence by working shoulder to shoulder with our highly engaged employees. We value our people and look for opportunities to build superior capability and talent through new ways of working and methodologies.

Changing Business Dynamics in IT Staffing and Consulting during COVID

Category: IT staffing and consulting

“Time spent on hiring, is time well spent.” – Robert Half

The IT staffing and consulting industry is not immune to COVID 19 situation and has been badly hit by this pandemic.

The employers are looking at different hiring patterns that would enable them to rethink their current talent management strategy and look at new ways of hiring and retaining talent.

With social distancing becoming a new normal, in-person meetings have become the thing of the past and the job interviews are being conducted remotely by phone or video conferencing methods.

Due to dwindling interpersonal connect, HR companies are embracing the digital landscape through teleconferencing, webinars and podcast channels to stay digitally connected with their employees during the on-boarding process.

Companies are looking for people who demonstrate the ability to learn quickly and keep pace with the digital transformation for long term sustainability.

In order to be future ready companies need to adapt themselves with cutting edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Robotic Process Automation and reassess their workflows for identifying possible automation opportunities. This would require the new age workforce to up-skill themselves with emerging technologies & be digitally savvy.

The imbalance created by COVID 19 in the staffing ecosystem can be handled effectively through cross functional skilling due to shifting workforce demands.

Conclusion

We at Newlineinfo understand the changing business dynamics and are committed to providing effective staffing solutions by leveraging on the emerging opportunities that enable business drivers for the future.

How RPA benefits your business growth

Category: Business, IT staffing and consulting

“The relationship between technology and people has to change in the future for the better, and I think RPA is one of the great tools to enable that change”. – Leslie Willcocks

Robotic Process Automation has become a new normal in the ways business carry out their operations and many organizations around the world have started embedding RPA tools and techniques to transform their operations due to its far-reaching benefits.

RPA works on a set of predefined rules and it’s used structured and unstructured data to handle repetitive tasks that were erstwhile carried out by humans. It frees up the time and space for the digital workforce and has enabled them to focus on delivering value-added services to their customers.

Key businesses where RPA is trending and is set to make sweeping transformations are covered below.

Finance: RPA uses technology like UIPATH and Blue Prism to automate repeat functions like preparation of customer invoices, managing and reconciling vendor payments, account payable processes with limited human supervision. This will result in a reduction of errors, end to end cycle time, adherence to the standard operating model, and enhanced customer experience.

HR: RPA offers tangible solutions in the field of HR and can transform the way organizations, onboard employees. The employee hiring and onboard process involves a set of tasks and undergoes multiple iterative rounds of email exchanges between the hirer and the candidate. Implementation of RPA will transform this process by reducing the onboarding time and manual errors associated with this process resulting in a seamless onboarding experience with minimal lead time. HR functions will also reap the benefits of RPA by extending their capabilities in other HR activities like training, employee engagement, etc.

IT: IT service sector is entrusted in handling critical business activities and any disruption in its activities will result in huge financial loss impacting all stakeholders. RPA will play a significant role in mitigating this risk by ensuring continuity of business through scheduled maintenance of critical infrastructures like server reboot, server configuration resulting in reduced downtime and system outage. RPA will also transform the ways of other IT enabled services like creation of email ID’s, management of security credentials and data backup and archival are handled manually, through automation and standardization.

Insurance: Insurance space is growing rapidly and a lot of its operational activities are still manual which makes it a natural prospect for automation. Repetitive processes like policy servicing, cancellation, and claims management give tremendous automation opportunities with the help of RPA resulting in reducing operational risks and faster TAT. This will also result in providing a robust audit trail and regulatory compliance. RPA will also help in providing scalable solutions to meet the dynamic demands of its clientele.

In future businesses will need to adapt themselves to market dynamics and keep pace with the technological changes like RPA which would enable them to re-invent their core competencies and restructure their modus operandi. This would fit them out with the competitive edge needed to meet the growing demands of their customers resulting in enhanced profitability.

Newlineinfo Corp would look at various options in leveraging RPA techniques and deploying them in its modus operandi in a bid to gain a competitive edge.

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