A Global Pandemic in the Digital Age

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, businesses all over the world have faced new challenges and unprecedented uncertainty.

The need to stay home and keep a safe distance from people has forced businesses to adapt and evolve quickly in order to continue to run effectively through the pandemic.

Thankfully, we are currently living in the digital age and are very lucky to have access to powerful technology to keep us connected in these difficult times.

As a company with two decades of experience and expertise in software testing and quality assurance services, we at Testhouse are fortunate to be well versed in cutting-edge technology and digital-first processes.

How Testhouse Responded to COVID -19

We are proud to admit that our senior management team proposed the idea of remote working to our board even before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. We were able to respond instantly, taking steps to enable remote working for all employees.

In fact, for four months now, all our employees have been working remotely, and we are extremely grateful for being able to make this adjustment with zero disruption.

We have also tried to use this as an opportunity to learn and grow as a business, by making the most of this unorthodox situation. Remote working does bring with it several benefits, and we have encouraged our employees to embrace them:

• Greater flexibility in working hours and patterns
• A focus on clear and transparent communication
• More autonomy and trust between teams
• Streamlined processes
• Better work-life balance and mindfulness
• More support for innovation

Testhouse Employees Make the Difference

During this time, amidst all these changes, our employees have shown that they are truly our company’s point of differentiation.

Our teams across all our locations have shown tremendous spirit and dedication, continuing to do their jobs and deliver for their clients in the face of the various challenges COVID-19 has presented.

The morale within the business has never been stronger, and we are extremely proud of the team effort that has gone into keeping things running as close to normal as possible. Testhouse has felt more like a community than a company over the last four months, and we intend to carry that forward beyond the pandemic.

A global crisis like this is a reminder that life is precious, and there are more important things going on in the world than business right now, but it’s also inspiring to be part of an organisation where everyone is passionate about doing their work to the best of their abilities.

From a leadership point of view, the company’s senior decision-makers did everything in their power to return that gesture of commitment to the workforce. We want to ensure that the pandemic does not have a negative impact on our employees, and we aim to protect as many jobs as possible for the benefit of the company’s long-term future.

The key thing now is for everyone to prioritise empathy and understanding. Everyone is finding this situation extremely difficult in their own unique ways, and we’re going to remain aware of that and support our employees however we can.

Ensuring Customer Comes First

We are very conscious that every business has been affected in a similar way, and that meant we had to be flexible with our customers to ensure their needs are met.

As businesses around the world began to face significant concerns, we asked our customers to share with us how the pandemic has impacted them specifically and asked for any additional ways that we could support them through this difficult time.

We reassured all organisations we work with that business would continue as normal during this crisis, and so we devised a strategy to stay proactive and responsive, including:

• Increased outreach and engagement with customers
• Developed new pricing strategies to ease their financial challenges
• Provided leeway in payments wherever possible

The new order of work also opened some exciting new means of communication with our customers and has since made the way we deliver our service more dynamic. For example, we:

• improved our already sound delivery governance and practices
• enhanced our secure connectivity and data protection
• enabled our distributed workforce with a wide range of digital skill
• leveraged best-of-breed tools for collaboration and communication
• utilised cloud technology for industry-leading software quality assurance

Health and Safety – The New Normal

Still, as the situation with the virus eases over the coming weeks and months, some people will inevitably want to get back to the office. As this happens, we plan to take every possible precaution in allowing people to return to work safely.

Testhouse will put in place strict health safety guidelines for distancing, protective masks, limited sizes of groups of people, personal hygiene for all employees, and providing any training on new policies where necessary.

Not only do we want to make sure that our employees are kept safe but that their families at home and anyone else they meet are also safe as well.

To reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading again, we will continue to take responsibility as a company. This means allowing more working from home than we did pre-pandemic, providing new opportunities for greater flexibility, and encouraging new ways of collaborating both internally and externally.

Looking Ahead to a Brighter Future

There is no doubt that the global business landscape will continue to change because of the coronavirus, and there will likely be more challenges ahead in the coming months.

However, we are optimistic about moving forward and learning from this experience to make a brighter future for everyone. This starts with our company’s culture and our attitudes towards the wellbeing of our employees.

Testhouse Founder and Group CEO, Sug Sahadevan, commented, “This pandemic has been devastating to many lives and businesses. The new need for everyone to stay home and change their ways of working has shown us just how important a healthy work-life balance is, and we’re looking forward to seeing that extra flexibility have an impact on our company moving forward.”

Rajesh Narayan, CEO – Middle East, Africa and APAC, said, “We want to create an environment with a better work-life balance for all our employees, which will create a happier and more productive team, and that will ultimately mean our customers will be receiving a better service.”

Our Next Steps

We will continue to work tirelessly to meet the needs and best interests of both our customers and our employees.

We are very proud to be a leading company in the technology space, as it gives us the opportunity to help bring people and businesses closer together, especially in the light of recent developments.

We are looking forward to taking our next steps into a world that has learned from this experience with COVID-19, to become a more compassionate business with a team that is stronger and closer together, even if some of them are working from home.