Managing the “New Normal” as a small team - learnings

Here we are! The new normal. Crescentrating and HalalTrip teams are now into our second week of Working From Home (WFH). Ten days ago we decided that we will do our part to help ourselves and the community by staying at home.

We do not have all the answers, but managing as best as possible what is within our control and fully internalizing the certainties of life will help us in some way to navigate the very uncertain times ahead of us.

Small businesses are definitely one of the hardest-hit segments. Although there are thousands of articles online on how best to work from home, we thought sharing our first-hand experience in these conditions will help other small businesses as well. 

Telecommuting is not new for us. Almost all of our work is done online, and sometimes some of us do work from home, but it is different this time around. The whole team is working from home for an extended period surrounded by a lot of unknowns. That brings a host of challenges but also new learnings and inspirations.

The Initial Preparation

Our preparation to get to where we are now started during the 2nd week of February when Singapore moved its disease outbreak response level to orange on Feb 7th. As part of getting prepared, the government also strongly recommended that all companies have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). We never had one. Within a couple of days we did exactly that; come up with a BCP. That included what-if scenarios of working from home, general precautions, what to do while still being able to come to the office etc.

We started by identifying the general precautions/preparations. They included:

• Make dua and istighfar more often.
• Be consistent with the dua(s) when leaving home, entering the home, morning azkar etc.
• Have everyone’s name, address, phone number and emergency contact person in one place.
• Everyone to wash hands regularly and/or use hand sanitizers often.
• Avoid crowded places.
• Identify all customer touchpoints which currently require face-to-face contact that can be done remotely.
• Avoid non-essential face to face contact with other external stakeholders.
• Appoint a Flu manager and check our temperature daily at 11 am and 4 pm.
• Wear a mask if suddenly feeling sick in the office.
• Be on the lookout for anyone showing respiratory symptoms.
• Look out for teammates who seem unwell.

While we were are still able to come to the office, we wanted to ensure all of us:

• Backed-up all files on our team drive on the cloud. 
• Took the laptops home every day.
• Cleared the garbage every week.
• Closed the main tap every day.
• Put off all electrical items every day except the refrigerator.

We ordered smart plugs for all the electrical points so that we could control them remotely if the need arises. We also ordered hand sanitizers, face masks and a contactless thermometer to check temperatures; all arrived within a couple of weeks. We then did a trial run of WFH on the 17th February so that we can try to iron out any issues to ensure everyone had the means to work remotely.

So we were as ready as possible (for the unknown!)

Activating our Work From Home plan

On Thursday 12th March, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) decided to close down all the Mosques for 5 days. As many other things were unfolding, getting exposed to the Coronavirus was becoming a real threat and we had to whatever we can to help ourselves and be socially responsible with our activities.

So on Sunday the 15th March, we decided to activate our WFH plans starting the next day. With everything happening around us, we made the decision that it is best to reduce the risk of our team and their families from exposure to the virus.

In the meantime, on that Monday (16th March) MUIS extended the Mosque closures until the 27th of March, the Singapore government announced further travel restrictions and Malaysia announced an almost complete lockdown of the country.

By announcing the decision to work from home the night before, we also wanted to test our readiness to go into the WFH mode at very short notice. That was when we realised that some of us had left our notebooks in the office, and some worried about the plants not being watered. So one or two of us had to go to the office to pick up a few things. 

(Our plants - Zara & Phillip - we did not want to leave them in the office!)

Initial Learnings

So here we are into our second week of WFH and these are our few initial learnings:

• It definitely helps to have a BCP in place. If you still do not have one it is time to put together one now. It is especially crucial for small teams.
• Doing a trial run definitely helped us prepare both physically and mentally for WFH. 
• Most of our work is done online regardless. We have been doing most of our task management, meeting management etc. online for many years now. We have been using online tools wherever we can. That has become very useful now.   

Having clear guidelines for working from home in terms of times, communication, being contactable etc. is required to make it work. These are some of the guidelines we have so far. We might have to tweak them as we learn more:

• Our normal working hours are from 9 am to 6 pm. So we kept to the same timings.
• We re-named our internal IM team group chat to "Virtual Office" (VO). We wanted everyone to greet each other when entering the VO.
• All have to be contactable on the VO during the normal office hours.
• Inform on VO if going to be away from “Office” for a longer period. Inform when you are back at the virtual office.
• Daily team calls at 10 am (video as much as possible) and a very short call at 4pm (no video). The morning 10 am call has been very productive so far.

One thing is certain, video calls are much more effective than audio-only calls. We have also done a few video calls with external partners. They also went pretty well.

The Challenges

Last Friday we had a discussion on the WHF experience so far and these are some of the challenges that the team identified:

• Working all alone becomes a challenge after some time.
• Getting distracted by housework
• The temptation to snack often while sitting not very far from the kitchen/refrigerator. 
• House setups are not always very conducive for WFH

We have not come up with answers to all of them (don’t think we will ever be able to overcome all of them) but put together the following suggestions (to at least reduce the pain!)

• Set up a functional workspace at home
• Develop a set routine
• Do more one-on-one video calls with each other
• Focus on completion over perfection
• Focus on productivity over time
• Work on different tasks/work to keep the focus

The team is in great spirit and we do not just discuss work on our daily calls. We are also now getting to know our backup team; the cats at home!

Our Focus

Our work has all to do with the travel industry, one of the hardest-hit industries. Although we might have to re-think, re-design and re-evaluate travel behaviour in the future, it will still be a key lifestyle choice of humans. We have been doing that for thousands of years and once we get over this, we will continue to be explorers. Hopefully socially conscious explores!

It is good to see that some destinations are taking this time to look at capacity and capability building initiatives. We are working with some of them to ensure they are ready when we get to the other side of this.

Our key focus is to deliver the projects that we are working with them now.

Of course, our other priority is to keep our cost down. We were already a pretty lean machine; so finding cost-cutting opportunities are very limited.

Our discussions are also on how we can be of help to the community. Few initial initiatives that we are working on are to provide free promotion on our platforms to other small businesses and also help to amplify the messages on the importance of social distancing and staying at home.

Please contact us if you are a small business and need any promotion support.

New Ideas

While we have been coming to terms with this new normal, we are also having some very productive discussions on developing new services, features etc. Some of this inspiration for new features would not have been possible if we were not in our current mindset. We have started a collaborative online designing of an extremely unique and interesting feature on Halaltrip to help the communities come together during these difficult times. If all goes well we should be able to launch it within the next 5 to 6 weeks IA.

Getting Back to Office

While we continue to work from home, we are also now looking at what we should do when we are able to get back to the office. Although we hope that we can get back to our “old normal” soon, it may take some time before we can do that. As such, we still need to take all the precautions we can when we start getting back to the office. Few things we are planning to do:

• We will split the team into two so that we will take turns to work from office and home.
• This will also mean we can implement social distancing at the office.
• All of us will bring our own prayer mats to use for praying.

Tying The Camel

As our faith tradition requires, we will do our best to “tie the camel” (as tightly as possible!) and then put the trust in the Almighty.

That’s it from us for now. We pray that all of you be safe and healthy. Looking forward to meeting all of you on the other side of this with a new strength, focus and inspiration to be doing good to benefit everyone.

This was our experience. Let us know how you are coping as well. 

Updates on the 6th of April

We are now into our 4th week of WFH. The world is a very different place from where we started planning for this two months ago. We could not have imagined the current state the world is in!

Challenges of Space at Home

When our team started working from home, most of them did not have any other members of their family doing that. That has changed now. With the Singapore government asking all non-essential businesses to work from home, it has created a new challenge. The use of workspace at home!

Most of us in Asia live with extended families, which is a great blessing. We live with our parents, siblings and even grandparents in the same house.

That means when many of them are working from home, getting private space to work becomes a challenge. Environment matters a lot when it comes to being effective and productive.

The question some of us have is, should we take the trouble of re-arranging the house since this is going to be a temporary situation. While each of us has our own challenges in managing that, a more strategic question is should the future design of houses take into account the scenario of more and more working from home.

Stressbusters

Working in a confined space for a long time is not fun. It does stress you out, especially if you also have to manage the "space" issues. Here are some ways our team is managing that:

• Taking a morning walk outside (that is still possible in Singapore within your own housing estate).
• If possible a grab a takeaway coffee or buy groceries from the nearby grocer. With new restrictions coming in, this may also be restricted soon. 
• Of course, all of us are doing online shopping.

Doing our part to help the travel industry and the community

We are fully aware that our travel industry partners are deeply impacted by this crisis. To extend our support to our partners in dealing with the outbreak, we decided to make our Halal Tourism Market Readiness Program (both online training module & certification) available for free for the entirety of April. We hope that by doing this, we can support the industry in their rebuilding efforts.

To support the "Stay Home" message, we also changed HalalTrip's tagline from "Get Inspired | Go | Inspire Others" to "Stay Inspired | Stay Home | Stay Connected".

We should stay home but also stay inspired and stay connected, as this will pass Insha Allah, even if takes a bit longer than we all want.

Suggestions to other small companies

The current situation is extremely challenging and no company is safe. More than other times, this requires us to get back to basics and keep things simple, so that we can have a clear mind to navigate this storm as patiently as possible. Few things that we have done or are doing:

• It is extremely important that the whole team continues to be convinced of the reasons why you are doing what you are doing. As such, having a discussion with the team on the vision and mission of the company and renewing the commitment of the team is extremely important. 
• Have a Business Continuity Plan. Discuss the plans with your team. The process of doing this will in itself help the whole team to be mentally prepared for any situation.
• The current crisis will have an extremely disruptive impact on the future of small businesses. Even if you have the ability to get past the first challenge of survival, it is also hugely important to make sure your business is still solving a problem in the post-COVID era. Businesses need to brainstorm if customers will still behave the same way post-crisis. As such it is crucial that you do some level of scenario planning. Most small businesses may not have the know-how to do it, in which case they should seek help.
• And most importantly, we need to fully embrace the certainties of life as our faith teaches us. Unless we fully accept the certainties, we will not be able to navigate the uncertainties calmly.

We pray that everyone remains healthy and resilient during this challenging time, and together we will emerge from COVID-19 stronger than ever before.