How did we strike a Work-life Balance at Yethi during Covid-19?
We wrapped up and bid a formal “Goodbye” to 2020–2021 and started 2022. We are halfway through and look forward to the rest of the year with a fresh perspective. A perception that re-iterates a famous line by Heraclitus, “The Only Constant in Life Is Change”. We know how true the phrase is as we have witnessed the swirl of changes in 2020 and 2021. The impact of the pandemic has not subsided, and amidst a lot of uncertainties about the current condition, it is becoming tougher to keep up with the changing scenarios. Along with paying attention to our health, we are also trying to have a harmonious balance of personal and professional lives by focusing on physical and mental well-being.
Now that we have resumed our office people say that they have now found a new work-life balance and have learnt the skills of better time management. Covid-19 had altered our lives, and the public health crisis made us shift to a sudden change of working from home owing to social distancing. Working in remote locations is not a new concept; digitalisation has made it possible to work from cafés, parks, on the go and in many other ways. But it has also taught us to be self-reliant, organized, and self-disciplined
Even though working from home has certain benefits, but sudden transitioning can be confusing and complicated. Covid-19 has left us feeling disrupted, stressed, and overburdened, but being able to adapt to the quick transitions from the office to home and home to office have made us realize that we human are flexible and can quickly adapt to changes. As now we have slowly resumed our office, look at what Yethi employees have to say about their experiences of establishing a balance between work and family during the COVID-19 work-from-home situation.
1. The show must go on
The decision to work from home during the second phase of lockdown was taken overnight. But since it was started, Yethi employees had a smooth transition. The strong technical infrastructure played a massive role in this transition. We never really had any complaints about our systems working or connecting with the server during meetings and training. We have successfully maintained the security and confidentiality protocols of the company.
As part of their key role areas, the sales and the development teams have to get into multiple client calls and presentations. We have achieved success in presenting demo sessions to our clients as well as closing some significant projects. Apart from the regular client calls, presentations, and project delivery, we have conducted a few key activities in the last 10 months of working from home.
i) Town Hall Meeting — Yethi conducted 2 Town Hall meetings virtually with 100% attendance. In these meetings, our managers informed us about our achievements in 2020 and 2021, goals set for the upcoming years and the developments so far. Along with new projects, processes, and products, Yethi is upgrading its processes and flagship products, adding some new features to Tenjin.
Yethi has taken a leap toward training, learning, skill development, and certification courses. Huge investment has been made in the training and learning platform so that the employee can reap the maximum benefits of these courses and get certified. Learning and skill development have been on focus for too long, during this Pandemic Yethi has introduced so that no employees would be left behind.
After handling businesses in over 22 countries in EMEA and APAC region, the company is all set to venture out and set up its businesses in the US and Australia. The managers also highlighted the key achievement in 2020 and some significant tie-ups with other big brands. It was an open forum in which the managers addressed some major concerns and resolved the issues at their end.
ii) 6-days Tenjin Training Sessions (New features) — 6-days Tenjin Training Session was conducted about the new changes in Yethi’s flagship test automation platform Tenjin. These six days of training required a secured connection with the VPN. The IT team of Yethi established the secured VPN connections at the trainer and trainees’ systems, and we completed the training without any technical glitches and disruption.
In the six days, the trainer gave an understanding of how Tenjin works. An open training platform was arranged for the trainees so that we all could practice. We got enough time to be familiar with the training module and resolve our doubts and queries with ease. With the support of everybody working from their home, we completed the 6-day long session was completed without any delay.
iii) Product update training — Yethi’s development team presented the product update. This training highlighted how Tenjin is used for payment messaging systems. The team conceptualised how payment message validation should be done, and they have conceived and enabled the scope of payment message validation in Tenjin.
Tenjin platform supports the validation of message format ISO8583, SWIFT, ISO20022 and others with a complete range of all message types. The platform runs the message to learn the exact format and validate them.
The scope of payment modules for Tenjin is the three categories, which are built in these new updates. The categories banks use mostly are global standard ISO certified messages, regional message types, and application-specific APIs. The team transferred the knowledge and training without any technical glitches.
iv) Massive Digital onboarding — Yethi has hired 350+ new team members in all its 4 locations, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, and Bengaluru, and extended office space with 3 new offices in Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore in the last two years. Because of travel constraints, the process of hiring and onboarding was accomplished on the digital platform.
2. And there was more fun time with family and friends
A healthy and balanced lifestyle requires you to be able to manage work and family. Yethi team members share their experiences. A few of them are listed below.
Yethi’s employee Sagar maintained a schedule and planned his tasks as per requirement. He used Pomodoro Technique for time management. He focused on and maintained a to-do list for daily tasks. He spent quality time together with his family members, eating lunch and dinner together. He made sure to go out for a walk with his friends. In his free time, he pursued his hobby, gardening.
Maniraj Assanparambil Purushothaman adds that after working hours, he spent time with his family playing indoor games. He took out time to catch up on the latest sports events across the world. It helped him to strike a balance. As much as possible he spent his time with his family.
Shashi Karan Nath Singh feels that being organized and following a disciplined lifestyle is a key to managing family and working, peacefully and successfully. Because of Covid's restrictions, he controlled his activities, avoided going out, and limited his social interactions. Following all rules and regulations, he performed professional work peacefully with a sound mind.
Prashanth R follows a simple motto, “Love all, serve all”. He feels that striking a balance between personal and professional needs utmost care. When these two mingle, it calls you to maintain a strict schedule. He did his regular work and spent time with his family. He took required breaks to refresh his mind, and regular walks to remain healthy. He had time to pray, meditate, do exercise, spend quality time with his family and meet the expectations of others. He believes, “Be kind to everyone no matter what the situation is”.
Look what Kavitha Rajagopal has to say. “Though COVID-19 pandemic times began on a tough note in the initial few days, the new normal had to offer much more than I expected. The work-from-home announcement due to the Karnataka-wide lockdown had put me in a dilemma if I’m going to be equally productive at home? But as the days went by, I realized the new normal has offered a better work-life balance.
My sleep time increased to 2–3 hours, I did not have to battle an hour-long journey anymore, and nor did I have to wait for the weekends to spend time with family. I could easily complete my work hours and log out by evening to have the rest of the day spent with my loved ones.
During the lockdown, I got time to pursue my hobbies like reading books, playing mobile games, and try cooking new dishes, which was otherwise not possible during normal working days. Earlier, I used to spend most of the time travelling, while the weekends were only meant for sleeping. I enjoyed the new normal.”
And the final words from the writer Bijita Bhattachariya, who is also an employee in Yethi. “There is no work-life balance, you have a life, and you balance your work. I had seen this quote and realized the importance of this sentence. I look back at 2020 and 2021 with no grief. There have been challenges, obtrusions, and disruptions. With its roller-coaster rides, 2020 and 2021 have been magnificent years. Along with managing my professional life, which usually extends a bit, I am also pursued my hobbies.
During lockdown 2020 and 2021, I prepared a daily routine, which included Yoga, meditation, dance, music, managing household chores, cooking various cuisines, sorting family and personal issues, spending quality time writing poetry, stories, and articles, managing my blogs and a few more channels. With plans of laying my foundation stone for the upcoming future, it is now tough to rein the horses, now when it is up and ready to go.
To my surprise whatever I started during the Pandemic and work from home, stayed with me even after I have resumed my office. The transition of working from the office, working from home and back to working from the office has been smooth.”
Covid-19, Global Pandemic has disrupted our lives, but we have found new ways of looking at it. We have got a whole new perspective of seeing the world for what it is, prioritising what is most valuable for us and balancing the new normal life. It is time to “be the change you want to see in the world”.