How Capgemini is ensuring ‘business continuity’ & ‘employee engagement’ amidst lockdown?

With the lockdown being extended till May 3, the challenges in business continuity are only going to increase.

For IT services company, Capgemini, there were quite a few business- continuity challenges. Like most IT services companies, data safety was an important issue which the company needed to address.

Pallavi Tyagi, chief human resources officer, Capgemini India, shares, “We have scaled up the IT infrastructure, increased internet bandwidth and strengthened our VPN connectivity. As a result, almost 95 per cent of our client billable staff is now very effectively working from home on our client engagement.”

We have launched the ‘Capgemini Bigg Boss  Challenge’ where employees along with their families or friends can participate by taking on an exciting series of tasks or contests

The company also had to set up desktops at employees’ homes or share laptops along with stepwise instructions to configure and connect remotely to the Capgemini network in a secure manner, via VPN.   

In order to maintain security protocols of clients, the company has installed custom cybersecurity tools and software. This is expected to  improve its remote surveillance capabilities to proactively detect cyber threats.

Tyagi said, “We have received a lot of appreciation from clients across the globe, acknowledging the business continuity maintained by the India team in such challenging times.”

“We have issued top-down guidance on different aspects of business continuity and created a crisis task force that meets daily to review processes and procedures,” reveals Tyagi. 

Apart from the regular flow of work, Capgemini also faced the challenge of keep its workforce engaged at all times, which was important to maintain the productivity levels.

The company claims that it is putting the employee at the centre of its thoughts. It firmly believes that, for any business to continue, the priority has to be the employees, as their efforts will help it manage the work and also help the business to grow.

Tyagi believes that it is important to focus on employee engagement virtually, to keep their spirits high during the lockdown period. 

“We continued to maintain our culture of engaging with employees and introduced innovative virtual employee- engagement initiatives, to boost their morale and keep their spirits up during the lockdown period,” Tyagi explains. 

Fun has always been a core value at Capgemini, and keeping this in mind, the Company continues to live it during the lockdown as well. 

We continued to maintain our culture of engaging with employees and introduced innovative virtual employee- engagement initiatives, to boost their morale and keep their spirits up during the lockdown period

“We have launched the ‘Capgemini Bigg Bosss  Challenge’ where employees along with their families or friends can participate by taking on an exciting series of tasks or contests. Along with this, we have also started various online quiz contests that have seen great participation from our employees. Nearly 20,000 employees have been engaged through this  pan India level programme,” Tyagi stated. 

Talking further about the different initiatives, Tyagi shares, “We have initiated programmes, such as ‘Re-vive in Five’, where teams engage with a topic — wellbeing, productivity improvement, health — to help spread positivity and team bonding.”

Capgemini has initiated the concept of on-line e-cards for facilitating recognition within teams. Tyagi believes there is always a reason to appreciate those who are supporting their business and their clients, during these difficult and challenging times. 

The CHRO  is of the opinion that the best way to march ahead in this crisis is to adapt to the new way of working and continue with sheer commitment.