My experience about persistence, transformation, and evolution during Covid 

There is nothing more exciting than an inspired soul seeking to challenge his potential, meets the leadership team at Qtech who conceived and built this organisation with their fierce will and relentless efforts. Yes, my journey started at Qtech, earlier this year, but a great one so far and looking forward for a far more exciting one!

As we always understood, change is the pre-cursor to growth, that exactly we have embraced so far and will undoubtedly be a part of our deep culture…The confidence the leadership team has instilled in me and the welcome gesture to invite change is something which moves me every day to deliver my commitment to this organisation…A long way to go…

When Covid struck, before I could even complete a couple of months with the organisation, future looked quite hazy for everyone. Furthermore, it looked tougher for us as we cater to travel industry!

But let me quote, in contrast, we did amazingly well in terms of seizing this opportunity for redefining our growth formula through business and people strategy. Excited to take you through my journey…

With a clear conviction that few elements such as organisation structure, culture, power dynamics, decision making process are key for setting and driving organisation’s strategy and growth, I was more than happy to take up this role of organisational transformation.

Firstly, we made a conscious attempt to set seamless HR processes through technology implementation. We have implemented HRMS during Covid times streamlining all the HR processes and proved to be a good breather to concentrate much on other people development strategies!

When crisis left many organisations with fewer options and tough decisions looked inevitable for them; manpower optimisation, downsizing, pay cuts etc. unfortunately dominated the scenarios and have become much prevalent. Even though we too had to come up with a contingency plan for survival, but with great happiness I can say, our action stood the management philosophy…honestly, no hard measures we had to choose specifically for these reasons except couple of mutually agreed separations due to absolutely unacceptable performance behaviours.

Remote working, with all apprehensions the world had, did work for us quite well, even though both the options come with its pros and cons. When many vouch for success of work from home due to its work-life flexibility, breathing social air in the office environment has become lifeline for many others. Considering safety, even though we continue to have work from home for everyone as of now, we look forward to adopt a blended policy for future, which I personally believe, is healthier.

During this situation, hiring people was an extremely remote choice, was a puzzle for us too initially. But we decided to go ahead with hiring key talents in the organisation, for restructuring and designing a much stronger entity. Of course, we made couple of misses on candidate selections. No worries, we got the right talent now for strategic brand management for Qtech. Focusing more on talent hiring, we have on-boarded key people for driving the growth. Setting up a team for emerging technologies (Data Science, AI, ML) is underway and see a promising future for creating good value proposition for our existing travel technology product, OTRAMS. Further, creating a talent pipeline for future manpower needs is taken up as a priority. 

A very flexible functional-leadership team of learning enthusiasts and greater wiliness to adapt changes is another striking element of this place. I have started the journey of people development through virtual sessions on various subjects. Our first virtual series on Design Thinking spread over ten sessions was quite insightful and people acceptance was overwhelming! Now I am working quite closely with one of the key technology lead for applying DT concepts for a system development.

The next best thing is to understand the pulse of the organisation, through systematic diagnosis and dealing with change through specific interventions. To start with, we have conducted virtual chat sessions with all the team. Further, to substantiate the understanding through a study, we have conducted an action survey to measure employee engagement level within the organisation. With a quick analysis, we could implement some immediate policies with regard to employee benefits. Further analysis are awaited for deeper insights on employee engagement and needed inventions will follow in the coming months for creating a better work place…

The excitement and efforts of key stakeholders to get our system GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant is worth mentioning. Again, much to do on framework, process, systems front. On our way to European markets!!

Talking about the life @ Qtech, a very lively workplace designed with creative themes and annual events such as Qtech Premier League (Cricket) , Qtech Super League (Soccer), Qtech on Wheels (Biker’s club), Qtech Carrom Championships add life to engagement activities and employee excitement. Our CEO, being a driving enthusiast and a biker gives more fuel to people’s excitement to enjoy these events.

The recent virtual Town Hall helped us creating leadership visibility and trust in people during these times of uncertainty.

As our industry holds tech obsessed millennials as major population, the change management seems quite challenging and exciting journey to drive their engagement.

This exciting journey was only possible with an absolute commitment and support from my team, employees and senior leaders at Qtech Software.

A closing quote – “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” – Peter Drucker