It has been almost a month since the beginning of the lockdown. It’s hard to find a business not affected by the total isolation. Now that we’ve had a chance to survive the changes in lifestyle and working habits and we’ve become comfortable with the “new normal,” it’s time to look around and assess how Intersog is doing.
After spending hours communicating with colleagues and clients, we’ve put together a short review of what has changed and what has not. Some of the revelations were very inspiring, so we’ve decided to share them with you.
The Intersog team
The safety and health of our employees are our ultimate priority at all times, not only during disease outbreaks. Intersog is fully committed to ensuring that every teammate feels safe physically and financially, as well as has everything they need to work from home and provide 100% high-quality services to our clients.
Here’s a short review of how things are going based on the insights we gathered:
Healthcare
We are all well. It’s a great relief to say so. Our HR team does a great job checking up on us several times a week. As of now, no diagnoses or troubling symptoms have been detected. Hopefully, it stays like that until the end.
“We survey all of our colleagues at least twice a week. It has already become a routine, but it never feels like a routine. We always get worried if someone says he or she doesn’t feel well. Sometimes it happens, taking into account the size of the team – we are over 250 now – and the fact we are all, more or less, on edge. For now, no one has gotten sick. We follow the news and develop plans to support our colleagues should they need it, though we really hope that we won’t have to enact them.”
Ksenia Boychenko, Head of HR
Our office managers and administrative workers also turned out to be heroes who don’t wear capes. While a few of our employees still visit office, they’ve stocked it with disinfectants and cleansers and regularly take measures to ensure our premises are safe and sound.
Here’s a short list of what they do on a daily basis:
- perform regular on-site cleaning and sanitization of all our offices;
- distribute personal hygiene products so that we never run out of cleansers, sanitizers, soap, wet wipes, and masks;
- raise awareness among the staff via printed materials and regular newsletters.
Wellbeing
According to dou.ua, 32% of industry players have either made a part of their staff redundant or cut salaries. Intersog is among those who have not compromised on their staff. The whole team is on board with 100% salaries. Actually, we have even grown a little bit during the quarantine. We’ve added +1 to our crew.
“Of course, people get worried when they hear news about large companies that are treated as industry leaders cutting salaries or firing their workers. It took some time to comfort the team, but to me it’s important to ensure that everyone feels safe. People are worried about their health and families these days. They don’t need to be worried about their jobs.”
Kate Goldberg, COO
Performance
Intersog’s policy has allowed working from home from the first day, so it was not a big shock for us to change our working environment (except, of course, System Admins, who had to work extra hours to ensure that all of the equipment we took from the office had 100,500 layers of protection).
“People are used to working remotely. Everyone understands it’s not a vacation but regular workdays. So, you don’t need extra motivation or total control to stay productive. My personal performance advice is to wear something casual during working hours – pajamas are decisive :)”
Anna Novikova, Marketing Manager
As of today, we are working as normal, delivering 100% of the services and products that our clients rely on. We understand how important our work is to their businesses, since, as MedTech and EdTech solution providers, many of them are on the frontlines.
Recently, our COO as published her own tips and tricks about how to keep remote teams up and running – you can find the full text here. We’d like to know if it was helpful to you.
Our clients
As our clients all come from different industries, the quarantine and crisis have affected them in different ways.
During the first week of the lockdown, our business development team spent a great deal of time contacting our partners to learn if they were doing ok and required any help from us.
Some of our clients have suffered from a decrease of customers. Our teams are working harder now to help them face the new market conditions well-prepared and with minimum losses. We treat our partners as close friends, so no one complains about working extra hours.
We also have clients who have suffered from a sudden increase in clients. In our project portfolio, there are a lot of MedTech, Telehealth, and Educational companies that are in higher demand now. We put forth maximum effort to help them cope with the rising load on their platforms so that they can provide flawless service to their customers.
Kate Goldberg, COO
Startups were maybe the most affected by recent events. Investors became extremely risk-sensitive and have frozen a lot of funding. Today, you need to offer something exceptional to raise money. One of our clients has managed to become one of the few who nailed it. Well done!
Wrapping up
We are ok, and all we care about are also ok. We are working hard to ensure that both we and our clients exit the crisis with both feet firmly on the ground or even having grown into something bigger.
What we truly miss are coffee breaks and water cooler discussions. Working together, we became close friends, and we currently lack these personal contacts that make our team feel more like a family. Luckily, we have domestic “colleagues” to inspire us…and hopefully to inspire you too.
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