Everything’s Coming Home
Ashwani Gupta
Whole-time Director and CEO, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited
As we adapt to new patterns of flexible working, I hear a lot of people asking how we can maintain a work-life balance. It’s a good question, but I believe we should really be asking ourselves how we can achieve a work-life integration.
Recently, I read a great book by Kim Scott called Radical Candor which resonated with my thoughts on this concept. Her philosophy is that we make a mistake in thinking that we can’t be happy unless we keep our work and life separate. As she says, “My work helps me enjoy other parts of my life, and the other parts of my life help me do better work.”
I’ve come up against both extremes of the work-life spectrum. Growing up and starting to work in India, my concept of work-life balance was influenced by our culture and point of view that work is part of life. Then I moved to Japan and continued to absorb the way of working there. When my job took me to Paris, I started to understand the European point of view and how they value time away from the workplace.
Paris is quiet in August—the French value time away from the workplace. Photo: John Towner
Over time, I’ve found my own path and I’ve managed to blend my life and my work seamlessly. I love reading, and usually find some stimulating ideas in the books I choose that I can adapt to my work. I’m also a big sports fan, and I’m always finding some tactic on the football pitch or the racetrack that inspires a new initiative. I don’t consider this blurring of the boundaries to be a chore or an imposition, because I’m lucky enough to love what I do. Mark Twain got it right when he said, “Find a job you enjoy doing and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
Of course, working flexibly and remotely would have been very different without the digital tools available to us today. In a further example of work-life integration, our dependence on technology for our jobs has spilled over into our personal lives. We increasingly rely on digital solutions to help us control our home environment, power consumption and security. Technology has even changed the way we shop—and that includes big purchases like cars. The pandemic may have accelerated this trend, but it’s not going to go away – it will become the new normal.
To reflect changing lifestyles, we at Nissan are investing heavily in digital experiences for our customers. It’s where the industry is going—Gartner's senior research director Pedro Pacheco says that online will account for 20% of automotive sales worldwide by 2025. We aim to focus on this trend and to become automotive leaders in digital.
The pandemic has taught us to rethink how we design, manufacture and sell cars. Digital has played a vital role in this transformation—it’s a great asset in terms of improved efficiency and effectiveness. We have already demonstrated our intent by enhancing our Nissan Shop@Home program, a comprehensive one-stop-shop initiative that we continue to roll out across many global markets. It enables our customers to switch some—or all—of their car-buying experiences to digital interactions they can do from home.
We are making buying and owning a car easier with Nissan Shop@ Home
In markets that have Shop@Home—with some slight differences depending on region—our customers can choose their model, “build” it online, calculate a finance package, find available cars in their area, or have a one-to-one video call with their dealer (there have been 1.2 million chat sessions in Mexico alone since the start of the pandemic). Customers can even book an “at home” test drive, where we deliver the car to your door.
The figures prove our customers appreciate it: online accounted for over 11% of Nissan’s total global sales in the first half of fiscal year 2020. Worldwide, we’ve seen 65% more customers doing their own finance simulations to make a car purchase decision using our digital finance calculator—that’s 3.8 million simulations since the start of the pandemic.
This is just part of a much bigger Nissan@Home initiative that builds on Shop@Home. In many markets, Nissan will now pick up your car for a service and drop it off again, and there has been an 81% increase in customers booking their service online.
We’re making buying and owning a car easier, so you have more time free to get on with your life and your work… or, ideally, both together.
Head of Cricket Partnerships at VoteBash | Powering Global Brands: Gamification, Web3 Footprint & Realtime Customer and Fan Feedback. Got Data Analytics Through AI? ??
3 年Yes pandemic is changing many things and digital technology is more adopted to curb this. Thank you for sharing!
Accidental Entrepreneur @ Craving Digital | MBO of Happy Finish India unit
3 年Very well articulated the concept of "Work-life Integration". Nissan leading the digital twin concept and allowing the consumer a purchase comfort on digital is indeed a right step towards embracing digital space. Onwards & Upwards.
Managing Director at MR Corporation Japan
3 年Nice article Ashwani san
Corporate and Internal Communication Manager @ Nissan Italia
3 年Great insights on sustainable work-life integration!