The work from home evolution

Is working from home (WFH) turning a profit centre into a cost centre?

One can say this has been a very interesting journey with great learnings and experimentation.
COVID-19 forced many businesses to adopt a WFH strategy. Is working from home viable? Are we not
turning profitable agents into agents getting paid to sit at home?
We wish to begin our journey as follow: One had to adapt to new a style of doing things from the
office to working from home very quickly.
Through innovation, technology, digital platforms we quickly had to learn how best to achieve
productivity equal to output achieved in the office. The Digital Era has certainly started.

Having the majority of our workforce working from home was a daunting thought. We’ve evaluated,
planned and geared all security, operational and technical challenges to enable working from home.
Reality quickly taught us WFH is not only a technical challenge but when you deal with people, you
need to listen and respond not only quickly but with what is really relevant.
We had to think differently on how to approach each and every process. How do we reward and
recognize our staff differently now that we are not together logistically? How do we keep everyone
in the loop around COVID-19 regulations and safety?

Several technical tools were developed, one being the JOC (Joint Operations Centre) to assist our
workforce to be more proactive in their day to day activities and manage productivity by the hour.
We created the Nimble University to empower staff to upskill themselves as and when needed. This
tool is easily accessible and is integrated with the Norman collections system. Staff are properly
motivated as they are allowed the privilege to work from home whilst they perform at an optimal
level.

The working from home model has really shown more advantages and engagement between staff and
management. Agents are always kept abreast with all business communications with various
communication processes from daily virtual team meetings, to one-on-one engagements via system chat
enablement. This enables us to maintain a sense of belonging between staff and the business.
People are our biggest asset and co-creating a WFH solution certainly helped Nimble to ensure that
everyone working from home, is part of a team, pulling towards the big objectives while having more
time and extra money in their pockets.

We are delighted with our role-out of WFH. As management, we had to shift gears from traditional
methods to a new way of doing things. We continue to learn how to improve WFH processes.

Remote working can benefit everyone, the company, and its employees, but keeping the balance is
important. The possibilities are endless.

Written by
Operations Executives: Cathy O’Callaghan and Moeshfiqa Levy