How has PDSL adapted throughout the COVID Pandemic?

How has PDSL adapted throughout the COVID Pandemic?

With the onset of the Pandemic i.e. COVID-19, businesses not only in Kenya but throughout the world have had to adapt to how they are doing business. This is to not only for the wellbeing of their clients but also their customers. Professional Digital Systems Limited (PDSL) has not been an exception to this. In addition to the government directives that had been put in place such as social distancing, wearing masks and regular sanitization, PDSL brought in additional measures to ensure that both employees and clients were safe.

One of the biggest changes that PDSL made was the move to allow more employees to work from home whilst having a skeleton staff in office for operations that remain critical

Policies

According to PDSL’s CEO, David Karanja, most staff have been given tools that enable them to work at home including the call centre agents in order to achieve social distancing with a policy of having five employees at the office has been in place. PDSL’s Chief Financial Officer, Anthony Kisia, mentions that the policies put in place along with individual safety measures have been undertaken to safeguard our employees, customers, partners and suppliers from endangering themselves during these trying times.

Other policies that are in place within PDSL include:

• Supplying staff with masks
• Handwashing stations at entrance of offices
• Hand sanitizers across the offices
• Moving in person meetings to online meetings via ZOOM and Microsoft teams (both department meetings as well a client meetings)
• Online onboarding of new customers

Remote Working

On the importance of adapting to these new changes the Chief Information officer, John Ndungu emphasizes that the pandemic has shed light on the importance of remote working as well as the use of collaborative technology to encourage working from home reducing risk of infection and exposures.

The new norm encourages in-office employees to practice working from home. “That allows people to develop the empathy and the knowledge for how to work from their home or wherever they want to work from,” he said.  These sentiments are echoed by the GM sales, marketing and communication, Charles Muturi, who adds that innovation by employees has increased as more out of the box ideas are being presented with employees having to adapt to the new work culture and environment.

“The general feeling is that employees are working smarter, longer, more collaboratively and constructively with the ability to work remotely." John Ndungu mentions. Millycent Arowo (Sales and Marketing manager) states that productivity amongst employees has increased with more and more people ensuring that the work done is of a high calibre with clients getting feedback quickly and efficiently.

What does the future look like with working from home?

Wayne Kurtzman, research director at International Data Corp, states that “Making the jump from the brick and mortar to the home or working off site—there are cultural accelerators that come into play. There needs to be some mentoring and modelling and acceptance,” 

With PDSL already having put this in play, John Ndungu  (CIO) sees remote working as a more permanent culture within PDSL As part of a move into what could eventually become a more permanent remote-work culture tools such as new virtual onboarding process for new employees via videoconferencing as well as supplementing the IT support process with new self-service tools to troubleshoot technical issues have been put in place.

What has been the biggest changes within your workplace?