BY: Umeed Kothavala CEO, Extentia Information Technology
We are currently in the midst of an unprecedented situation. The global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our families, communities, work, and way of life.
Extentia would like to extend the full measure of our sympathy and support to all those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The health of our employees, customers, partners, and communities always come first and we’ve taken steps to ensure that our sky-high standards of excellence are being maintained during these trying times.
We’ve been monitoring the situation since January and we wanted to reach out and share updates on our thoughts and plans for the next few days and weeks.
Safety: The safety of our colleagues, customers, partners, friends, families, and communities comes first. Even while we’ve done everything to ensure their personal health we realize the need to take a more holistic view of things. For this reason, we have taken proactive steps to address mental and physical well-being, financial security and emotional stress.
Business Continuity: Continuing to run our business and operations as effectively as possible is an important objective for us and we have already rolled out changes and support to help our teams deliver in a more distributed model. Fortunately, we know a thing or two about working from multiple remote global locations and we’ve been able to scale that experience to help our teams continue to work with minimal disruption as we locate and execute from distributed sites. All our office locations are operating, and we’re aggressively updating policies, infrastructure, and support to facilitate even more global collaboration across every single one of our teams.
Hygiene: We have an incredible housekeeping staff that has always ensured that we have a clean and hygienic environment to work in. Now, with enhanced processes and standards in line with what global health organizations recommend, we have ensured that the surfaces present in our offices are safe, sterile and contaminant free.
Social Collaboration: We have already started minimizing external and internal social and physical interaction and have all but eliminated international travel. We’re recommending that all meetings, etc. that are critical be held virtually and that any optional physical interactions either held virtually or postponed until we have more clarity. We have also recommended that any non-essential travel be deferred or undertaken with utmost caution in order to minimize the prospect of spreading anything through interactions in unknown environments.
Information: Our teams have been in touch with local official government sources and hospitals in order to make sure that we have access to reliable, actionable information. We have also set up processes to ensure that we’re prepared in case anyone needs special attention, information or to respond appropriately in the case of the current situation escalating. For extra safety, we have an Extentia doctor on call and encourage everyone to make sure that they’re relying only on trustworthy information to inform their decisions and actions.
Contributing: Extentia is already working with partners to do everything we can to help and contribute to our communities and environments during this immensely challenging period. We want to put our skills and expertise to use and also encourage everyone in our stakeholder network to be a responsible member of society. Checking in on vulnerable neighbors needs to be balanced with not having non-critical social interactions to truly succeed in repelling this threat.
Flexibility: The situation around us is evolving quickly and unpredictably and we will strive to demonstrate a high degree of flexibility to learn, adapt and implement – as we learn more, get feedback, and plan for the future. It is often observed that the greatest innovation takes place during times of great upheaval or transition. And while we know that all upheaval is transient, we will do our best to harness every ounce of our ingenuity to drive forward path-breaking solutions for the betterment of tomorrow. Please stay safe and take care of each other!
For more information, please visit at: www.extentia.com
