• Inside Varroc

Being an Auto-Engineering and Manufacturing organization, we never thought that ‘Work From Home’ would ever be a requirement. Manpower is essential not only to operate our automated machinery in plants, but they are also required to design and develop new products in our R&D centers. The Pandemic was an eye-opener when all 28 plants in India were shut down from 22nd March. This unforeseen situation propelled us to introduce a ‘Virtual Workplace’, and reconstruct certain sectors of the office to install all the safety measures needed to fight the Pandemic.

Ensuring WFH for all- Several Computer-Devices were delivered to all our team members from the R&D facility who had to now work from home. We enabled VPN access on every system to ensure that the teams could access all organizational information even when out-of-office, while also immediately implementing a mature security system to tackle any unforeseen data-security issues.

Health of our team- A four page-long emergency medical-docket was provided to every employee, where the necessary health regulations were mentioned. We delivered tailored masks for our Plant-Workers, who faced an acute shortage of face-masks. We initiated Homeopathy-Dosage programs that provided our employees and contract-labourers the necessary medical immunity. A roster was maintained to ensure that the teams could engage in regular collaborations while balancing both virtual and physical office.

Manufacturing, Engineering and Office Activities and Infrastructure- To maintain a continuous engagement with comprehensive Learning & Development Programs, we organized more than 40 virtual modules which were taught over 11500 hours of training. Our quarterly townhalls were also organized virtually to ensure individual engagement with organizational goals.

We hosted a few virtual Employee-Initiatives like, ‘Varroc’s Got Talent’ which set an interactive online platform that brought families and teams together.

Certain HR processes like; Hiring, Inductions, Employee-Exits, Learning Modules, Appraisals are under normal circumstances conducted in a hybrid model- some of which are physical and some are virtual. However, this year we had to move to a completely virtual model.

When office resumed, the health and safety of our teams were of prime importance to us. The fingerprint-recognition systems were replaced with face-recognition systems to help monitor attendance by avoiding touching surfaces. Social-distance regulating marks were made in all locations. We made sure all our goods that reached the plant and were dispatched from the plant, went through a thorough round of sanitization.

We set up a stand-in medical practitioner and a set of sick rooms in all our facilities. All hand-touch points like taps and water filters were reinstalled with foot-controlled systems, also several sanitizing-points were placed at regular intervals around office space. All physical meetings and visitor meetings were conducted online. The virtual outreach made even a large and geographically diverse organization like ours, intimate and connected.