Our lessons from the Covid 19 crisis: Shiva Shankar, Head – Data Center Operations, Reliance Jio Infocomm

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, needs no introduction. The name Jio has completely changed the Indian telecom industry and has changed the way India consumes data. Shiva Shankar, Vice President and Head – Data Center Operations, Reliance Jio Infocomm, shares with us the key lessons learnt from the Covid 19 crisis

Some edited excerpts:

1. From an IT standpoint, what are some of the key initiatives initiated by your organization in ensuring that business continues as usual?
The first aspect that was analysed by Jio is to segregate the key and critical employees who are to work from office versus who all could work from home. The percentage split of this came out to be approximately in the tune of single digit vs the rest. Human resources team swung in with multiple notifications, trainings (for those who never attempted this earlier) which added a lot of value.

The IT team ensured that the VPN concentrators and thin clients are able to take up the additional unprecedented load and augmented its capacity to handle this huge surge. Organization also ensured that the critical folks who are required at office are given a proper accommodation close to the office (through the large guest house setup) and needless to say other mandatory requirements like food, transport and safety are managed in a military style. IT also enabled a COVID health survey of the groups’ employees and families which had to be filled mandatorily daily by all the employees. This information provided all the needy information of the health of employees and their loved ones at the group level for the group medical teams and HR to swing into action.

What are some of the key challenges faced to ensure a Work from Home Policy?
A very large organisation like Jio is bound to face some teething challenges while a large population of its employees start to dial-in to work. Our challenges weren’t worth mentioning compared to the volume that it was hitting in to the enterprise network. Few load balancing of thin clients, distribution of laptops for those who had to get it as part of WFH were some of the initial challenges

What are some of the key lessons learnt during this crisis?
Barring learning that that nature is the super and supreme power, we didn’t face any major challenges.

What are some of the technology tools used to facilitate smooth collaboration between employees?
Being the largest Telco today, the voice and video communication would always be the key to collaboration and that continued to be not just for jio, We adopted Microsoft Teams in a big way during this epidemic. MS teams provided not just forming teams, but the whole organization and leaders to know exactly whats happening around their large organization with zero info lag.

Starting from Leadership teams until the last layer, the teams spread their wings through MS Teams. For example, at the touch of a button I had the option of talking/reviewing my various platform leaders, their teams or my leadership team and their online minutes, review actions assigned. Whether it is voice or video the collaboration tool came too handy. It gave a personal touch of being together at the same time serving the objective of the organization. Microsoft Team came so handy to ensure that no one felt that they are digitally distanced despite being socially.

Needless to say a secure Enterprise VPN is another technology which came handy. I have seen my folks displaying their large dashboards in their Home LED TV’s while their laptop’s primary screen was used for their regular work. This was as good as how they used to work at their workplace.

Do you believe that the current mandatory use of remote work for business continuity is a signal to all organizations that it’s time to revisit their remote working policies and redesign them for wider application for business as usual? Please share your perspective?
While larger organisations like Jio was on a better position to handle the WFH need, am very certain that many organizations would have learnt their lesson for the need to have the tools and technologies to support this requirement. WFH is not just for IT organizations but every line of industry is what the world got to know during this tough hour.