Stay Home. Stay Safe. But Please, Work!!

Team MagicMind is working from home. This is no surprise, given the level of urgency due to the Corona outbreak. These are difficult times and we must fight back by embracing the most potent weapon right now – that of social distancing. The decision to allow employees to work from home was taken even before the official order on lockdown arrived – this was a decision that was taken promptly, the moment it was seen that the situation was getting out of control. Situations like the one that we are currently confronting are rare and that’s why we are almost never prepared for them.

In the early days of the outbreak, when India was still not immediately at risk, there was still confusion in our minds as was surely in the minds of other organizations as well, as to whether switching to work from home would be the right way to go. The biggest challenge in crises like these is to know the “when” – everyone seems to know “what” to do but nobody is quite sure “when” to do it. All of us were increasingly becoming certain that switching to a work-from-home was going to be inevitable, but none of us could say it with certainty when that regime needed to take over.

Well, all that is done and dusted. Here we are, right in the midst of the pandemic’s outbreak. Each day, it is claiming lives, the streets are getting emptier and our pulses faster, out of fear but more out of a sense of hopelessness in the face of an adversary that we don’t even understand properly. Even as organizations were battling economic downturns and were grappling with across-the-board problems like dropping productivity and dearth of skilled manpower, COVID-19 entered the stage out of the blue and has been wreaking havoc ever since. 

But prevail we must! It is our collective responsibility across organizations to help reinstate the economy to normalcy by not forgetting our commitment to a forward-looking work ethic. It is therefore our collective duty to ensure that work from home does not become loiter from home. At MagicMind, our employees are determined to prove the myth wrong that working from home equates a lack of professional dynamism and enthusiasm.

At this juncture, out of our heartfelt concern and sense of responsibility towards the economy, we would like to give some advice on how to maintain the work-life balance under the circumstances:

1.  Keep your workstation and the rest of your home separate – this will help improve concentration levels and reduce instances of interruption
2.  Before starting work every day, exercise for a while to keep yourself fit. While this is an advice that should be followed regardless, it assumes additional importance now, since the virus is known to prey upon individuals having weaker immunity.
3.  Take small breaks of a few minutes, walk around or maybe do small exercises, wash your face and get back to work again every 1 hour. This will not eat into your work routine much, perhaps adding up to no more 15 mins of break time every day but will ensure that you remain focused and do not become drowsy during work. The latter is very possible since when you are at home, the intensity of work environment isn’t there, so progress can become slower.

These were general guidelines that should help organizations keep their profitability and deliverables in mind while also ensuring that the employees remain healthy and safe. After all, it is beyond doubt that both of these have to be given equal importance if we have to recover fully from the blow that COVID-19 has dealt us. At MagicMind, we love to remain positive, to always see the glass half full when others see it half empty. We love to believe that people are generally good and hard-working and sincere and that’s why we strongly believe that we will come out of this crisis stronger. But belief without action turns into blind faith, so we are hell-bent on backing this optimism with utmost dedication to our work.

Wishing everyone safety and a busy time ahead.

Let’s unite in this multifaceted battle against our health, our future and our economy.

Because together, we can truly weave magic.