Dipesh is a tech-enthusiast who likes working on solving problems of a mass. He has worked on providing tech-solutions to Government Administrative departments, Power Plants and Ship Building corporations across EMEA along with advising a few budding startups. At LenDenClub, he has contributed to creating an online marketplace for P2P Lending and is focused at innovating, improvising, simplifying and stabilizing the platform in order to keep it updated and robust.

Here are his key experiences in the industry in relation to the current COVID-19 pandemic and WFH situation.

What is the impact on employee performance in the pandemic situation?

Initially there was some panic for all because of COVID-19 which impacted the performance. But we continued keeping our team motivated and composed. As of now, we are hardly moved by any external forces such as market crash, COVID, or any type of job securities. The team is now quite composed and working hard towards achieving organizational goals.

Have you taken any proactive measures to maintain employee performance?

Of Course, like I said the first job was to ensure that pandemic panic was dealt with. After that, we worked on everyone to keep them on their schedule, meeting their daily target. It was a huge plan, with various KPIs.  But, planning did help.

Will there be any changes to existing appraisal methods? Process & Frequency?

It is quite a tricky question. We believe, external factors should not affect the internal process. There is no change as such in terms of process. In terms of frequency, of course, the entire country was affected and we were no different. So, we had to delay the process for a while. We will be taking an appraisal very soon.

Do you think formalizing feedback and/or regular performance check-ins will make a difference?

Of course, it makes a significant difference. Feedback is required to introspect themselves, evaluate what they are doing and where they stand concerning the organizational goals, and if they find a gap, understand how do they realign themselves to it. Giving feedback is important.

With employees and managers all away from each other, what steps are being taken to ensure clarity on work objectives/goals and their priorities?

We formulated a detailed process for this. We maintain a detailed list of our next 6 months of product plans. Because the current month becomes our top priority, we assign our current month priority to our product managers. They then slice & dice the project into smaller problems and assigns it to the tech team to build solutions around it.  Meanwhile, our business team also constantly contributes to product innovation and improvement through reviews and periodic assessment of products across the departments. The product team then sits with the business team to collect feedback and suggestions and update the priority list based on the importance and impact. Each member contributes to the organizational goal.

In managing performance, how has HR roles changed in the current situation?

The HR role was crucial in keeping everyone calm and composed in the current situation. In addition to the work related interaction, we organized activities such as periodic motivation, fun games & quizzes, trivia, online tea party or coffee talks to keep the team engaged.