April 23, 2020 • 2 min read
India keeps up the pace in lockdown
Our workforce in India continues to deliver during a nationwide lockdown.
On March 24, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, announced an initial 21-day nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19.
This was the beginning of an urgent mission to disperse our largest global hub for engineering into thousands of homes equipped for remote working.
Our workforce of close to 5,000 in India, known for giving flexibility to hundreds of projects around the globe at any one time, had to draw on the same flexibility to resume their work in a very different setting.
Five weeks on
Dinesh Pissurlenkar, President for Worley in India, appraises the transition so far.
“As it stands, overall more than 85% of our people in India are now successfully working from home. Over the next few weeks, we expect this figure to be even higher as we enable more people to log on remotely.
“Outside of Mumbai, all our Worley offices in India are almost entirely working from home, with no impact on those offices,” explained Pissurlenkar. “However, the majority of our people reside in Mumbai, which is home to our Gigaplex building. This is where we support projects from around the world, and it’s been the most pressing logistical challenge.”
Finding stable footing
Pissurlenkar is pleased with efforts to stabilize our projects during an uncertain time.
“The critical projects supported by our Global Integrated Delivery (GID) team were all under control within one week, which accounts for 70-75% of our work. This has meant that business continuity has been maintained as similarly challenging transitions occur in our offices around the world.
“Every region we work with is different, but we’ve kept our connections and adjusted accordingly. Our people have adapted to this situation very quickly, which would not have been possible without their hard work between the initial disruptions to their daily routines. They continue to deliver at their maximum to complete our projects in progress.”
The benefits of remote working
With the nationwide lockdown extended to May 3 at the earliest, Pissurlenkar has already observed the benefits of working remotely.
“I have been listening to many stories from our people. In particular, the travel from home to office in India is always a challenge. It can take up to two hours for our people in Mumbai to commute each way. They do this every day, from their home to the office and back, which is now not required. This flexibility is providing time zone advantage, high energy and comfort to our people during a difficult period.
“Working from home is not necessarily in our genes,” laughed Pissurlenkar, “but we’re adapting quickly and we’re very flexible. We’ll do what it takes to keep our people safe and healthy.”
