The last few weeks have felt a bit like a bad movie I’ve been forced to watch twice. As the CEO and Founder of a company that operates in both the East and West, I’ve watched the effects of COVID-19 spread across the world from Asia to North America.
When the outbreak first happened in Asia earlier this year, it was quite a shock to our offices in China, which have more than 500 employees based out of four cities.
Two months later, China is starting to resume a sense of normalcy and our China teams are back in the offices.
As European and North American companies continue to combat the effects of this pandemic, I thought it would be helpful to share my experience dealing with COVID-19 in China.
My hope is that sharing my learnings might benefit other senior leaders in the West as we go through this tough situation.
Dealing with the outbreak: Quickly mobilise and over-communicate
Initial news of the outbreak in China occurred during the Lunar New Year holiday, which meant many of our employees had travelled back to their hometowns and were spread out across the country.
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As soon as we learned about the virus, and its escalating infection rate, I knew we had to act fast.
I quickly mobilised a team of senior leaders who became the COVID task force. Establishing this team was crucial. During crises having a team whose responsibility is solely dedicated to quickly learning about the issue, making rapid decisions, and continuously monitoring the situation can help mitigate potential downfalls or losses.
The task force set up a war room where we would meet every day to discuss issues related to the pandemic. Whether it was the safety of our employees, actions we could take to help them, or ways to ensure continued service to our customers, we used the war room to develop immediate tactical plans that could quickly be implemented and executed with minimal resources.
To enhance communications between task force members we set up group chats on mobile messaging services such as WeChat, DingTalk and Microsoft Teams to ensure that all members could be in contact 24/7.
We also quickly realised how important over-communicating was to ease the stress and anxiety of employees. We luckily managed to track down everyone during the holiday period and ensured that they were safe.
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We immediately started sending out daily updates that provided employees the latest status on the virus in China and our action plans as a company. It was important to me that employees knew what we were doing as an organisation, this wasn’t the time to be silent or hide behind templated emails.
I wanted to be transparent and let employees know exactly what the task force was doing and the issues we were tackling to help ensure their safety and the longevity of the business.
It was evident early on that the employees appreciated the over-communication, it allowed them to feel confident in our ability to function during a high-stress time. Even in the aftermath of COVID-19, we have strived to keep strong communication with our employees as it’s enhanced our overall employee engagement.
Lockdown and travel restriction: Make the pivots work for you, not against you
As the outbreak continued to evolve after the holidays, China’s government issued a nation-wide lockdown. With little warning and time to prepare, we quickly had to pivot our entire business to a work-from-home (WFH) model. We knew that this would be an adjust for employees, so to ensure a smooth transition we made sure our WFH model encompassed two key elements:
Multiple communication touch points: To maintain strong communication and engagement during the WFH period, we leveraged video conferencing software such as Zoom, WeChat and DingTalk to keep the teams connected through daily huddles.
We encouraged employees to put their videos on at every meeting so they could see their colleagues and feel a sense of connection.
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Humanistic management approach
Dealing with a country lockdown can be an emotionally and mentally taxing experience. I encouraged all of our senior leadership to focus on a humanistic approach to management. This meant taking extra effort and care to touch base with employees and see how they were dealing with the new WFH situation.
Our People and Culture team also played a huge role in getting employees settled, particularly those who were not able to travel back to their homes. They also did routine health checks with employees to ensure that anyone who did not feel well was provided the right health supports.
Shifting to a WFH model so quickly did not come without its challenges. We had technical issues that needed to be sorted, in order for the development teams to have remote VPN access, employee morale to manage with the mandated self-isolation and of course the key issue of keeping productivity high despite the disruption.
After a week of our new WFH model, I learned that our employees were extremely adaptable and resilient. They were making the pivot to the WFH lifestyle work, even though it required a few changes to their day-to-day. Instead of fighting against it, our entire management team was on board to make it a success.
We understood the pivot had pain points, but we were all willing to put in the work to make the new model a success. While productivity did decline in the first week, as expected, we did see a quick rebound as employees began to get comfortable with the new arrangement.
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Weathering the storm: Innovate for the sake of public good
As it became more apparent that the lockdown was not going to be a short-term option, I began to think more critically about how PatSnap could help during the crisis. As a company that specialises in intelligence solutions that help companies learn everything they need to know about a competitor’s technology and innovation, I knew that we could play a key role in helping companies make a difference in combating COVID-19.
The senior leadership team and I made a strategic decision, to make all of PatSnap’s solutions free to anyone in China. We strongly believed that this was the right thing to do, and our way of helping the many people who were affected by the coronavirus.
Looking back, I am extremely proud of this decision, we choose innovation for good over profit, and saw immediate benefits by doing so. As a result of our free access, over 3,000 China patent office examiners were able to continue their patent examination work from the comfort of their homes.
We also had over 5,000 companies sign up for free access to our solutions, enabling them to continue collaborative work between their IP and R&D team.
Because of the positive experience and feedback we had in China, we have decided to do the same thing in the West and offer all of our PatSnap solutions for free to everyone around the world.
During tough times it is natural to think solely about what this means to your company’s bottom line or existence, but as leaders, it is important that we also seek to think about what good or value can we add to our customers’ or communities’ lives during times of hardship. Companies who do this and have a customer-first mindset, win in the long run.
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Post Lockdown: Keep the safety of employees a top priority
Once the government lifted the lockdown, we invited all our employees to return to their office. We knew that having employees return to work would require implementing strict measures to ensure the continued safety of our team. With our employees’ health and well-being in mind we implemented the following:
- Daily mask provisions for every employee. They were required to wear the mask while in the office.
- Mandatory sanitisation of hands upon entering the office.
- Continuous stringent cleaning and sanitisation of all work areas throughout the day. This also included daily deep cleans of the office in the evening.
- Mandatory temperature checks for all guest.
While some of these measures could be seen as extreme, we knew that our number one priority had to be the safety of our employees. We could not risk the lives of our employees by assuming that things could operate the way they did pre-COVID.
Present day: There is a rainbow after the storm
Currently, things in China are slowly starting to stabilise. Most companies are back to normal work schedules and citizens are starting to regain their lives. PatSnap China is on its way too, business is slowly starting to pick up and employees have adapted to the new way of life at PatSnap.
As I reflect on the last two months, I am reminded that there is always a rainbow after the storm, you just need to look hard enough. In our case, the pandemic allowed us to implement new processes and procedures that have become part of our company DNA.
We’ve increased communication and engagement with employees, enhanced our brand ethos with a dedication to innovation for good and successfully demonstrated that our business can strongly operate on a WFH model. These are all key things that COVID-19 forced me to learn.
And while the road to learn these things were tough, I am hopeful and excited for the future and know that PatSnap West will also come out of this pandemic stronger and better.
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