As the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak sweeps across the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared it as a pandemic. With the outspread of the crisis, many countries have closed the doors to schools, universities and businesses. This has drastically changed the day to day lives of people from every walk of life. The warning from the World Health Organization (WHO) that pandemic activity was accelerating, with confirmed cases exceeding a million worldwide and projections going over many millions, brought many nations to lockdown.

In responding to the “world public health emergency”,  companies all over the world have rolled out remote work for the staff to adopt the work-from-home protocol. At Avtra, we are doing our part by practising “social distancing” with remote work culture to combat the spread of the pandemic. Employees at Avtra are provided to WFH infrastructure with remote work protocols while creating flexible work options assuring the health and safety of our employees and protecting the larger community.

How Avtra tackle Covid-19 

During this time,  many companies are experiencing unanticipated challenges with the major shift of their daily routine into the remote work setting. Here is how we at Avtra are creating the best WFH culture, discovering new ways to keep up transparent communication through regular e-meetings, incorporating the best-fit tools and technologies, and keeping up with the team’s wellbeing.

Technology ready for work from anywhere in the world

As a trendsetting aviation software engineering company that has been the driving digital transformation in the Aviation Industry, Avtra has ever been ready with technology and infrastructure for its employees to work from anywhere in the world. Employing cloud platforms for all hosting needs and shared services with secure access to these, using cloud-based project management, knowledge sharing and collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence, Slack and Zoom laid the technology foundation for working remotely. 

Promoting effective regular communication

The key to WFH is effective communication among the team on a day to day basis. Avtra has taken on time and necessary measures to implement effective employee engagement strategies bringing the effective collaborative tools and technologies allowing the teams to be fully present. Daily scrum meeting is a part of our daily checklist for communication. The regular stand -up meetings that teams used to physically attend were quickly replaced with daily Skype scrum meetings. Our employee’s day begins with having a moment with their respective scrum team’s on conference call and briefing on what they are planning to work on as well as a discussion on any showstoppers on helping all team members to stay on the same page.

Avtra is continuously seeking to improve the ways our teams communicate and find new means to adopt best practices to minimize the impact of our shift from office culture to work from home culture. As a part of this, the management and team leaders are actively taking part in regular team engagements, meetings to be seen and heard often. The curve of the team’s efficiency and productivity has risen during a short period of time and there are positive changes being seen every day. 

Building and sustaining high-performance teams 

Setting up clear priorities and expectations that align with the company goals is an essential part of remote work. Our teams are communicated on the priorities along with the expectations with daily productivity benchmarks put in place. From the employee’s point of view, long-term WFH could be a major transition to stay focused on the targets and timelines. Teams at Avtra are embracing the new WFH culture and adapting to the protocols faster than ever before. The teams are motivated to achieve the coherent priorities that were clearly set for them. The flexibility and empathy we carry along is the key for the team to help adjust and make the transition process seamlessly despite the logistical and emotional challenges posed by remote work.

A high-performing workforce is a crucial factor for the growth and survival of the business and the company. Our management and leads are working on identifying the unique needs of technology, processes and tools of the team to cope with the drastic changes. To keep the team’s energy levels up we are incorporating collaborative tools such as Slack through which the team can actively communicate on their work in progress that optimize the performance of the project teams.

Avtra support to clients and partners across the globe

Avtra’s culture is built upon the foundation of support. We keep extending our support to the clients across the world, partners, and communities to tackle this global crisis. We have taken necessary actions in varying degrees to stay connected with our customers, partners embracing zoom and video conferencing platforms to drive the work throughout this unprecedented time.

Going digital means way beyond using technology

Working remotely is about more than just directing efforts to streamline the project work incorporating the tools and technology. The team’s emotional well-being and meaningful interactions are crucial to be taken care of amidst the effects of the pandemic situation and transition of work setting. Avtra’s HR team has taken a different approach to support individuals personal wellbeing while strengthening relationships and trust. 

“Team’s Friday happy hour is now replaced with a virtual happy hour on Zoom with virtual team building activities in place.”

Furthermore, HR team has been running daily online icebreakers in the form of IQ quizzes, Riddles and Puzzles through online collaboration tools to keep the team spirit up and engaged. This is how we build up the WFH culture at Avtra promoting employee’s happiness and building team morale.

Sneak Peaks of what Avtra team members talk about how they are running their practices from a distance.

Ryan Poulier – Senior Project Manager
“As we use the latest Project Management and IT tools, we see very little loss in productivity, interaction and collaboration between the team while working from home. In fact, some of our team already have been working remotely for several years, and we have perfected our policies over time to be ready for a situation like COVID-19.“

Nazick Ahmed – Associate Technical Lead
“Adoption of effective tools and best practices made us virtually well connected as we were before in the office premises.”

Rashmi Woranga – Technical Lead
“Working from home has its own perks as I could focus more on the task effectively with less disturbance. The conversations made via instant messages or skype calls assist in resolving the concerns efficiently.”

Thilini Liyanagamage – Quality Assurance Lead
“In my opinion, working from home allows me to work at my own pace. It allows me to work with less disturbance and on a flexible schedule. Also, It lets me work self-motivated thus resulting in more productive work.”

In Conclusion

As countries across the globe take measures to conquer COVID-19, the world economy forum states the COVID-19 pandemic is the mirror image of the global financial crisis (GFC). While the authorities and officials are working around the clock to protect public health, we at Avtra understand the broad economic impact that will incur a high societal price for the community. Being an export brand, we’re striving to do our part to reduce the impact of COVID-19 upon the communities we are built upon and depend on for our success.

This pandemic forced the entire corporate world to rethink new resilient and adaptive ways to cope with the transforming ecosystem, while also delivering economic value with new business models to serve the communities, address health needs, and survive the overall business. While this outbreak pushes companies to think outside of the box to embrace innovation and find practical substitutes on a large scale, this could be the beginning of a new future where people meet and work together virtually. Will this be the uprising of digital virtual work culture?