How we survived the lock-down.
my way of making sure we didn’t need to fire anyone.
Nemmadi.in is a startup, we are a family of 14 members, if we were to include our franchise brothers & sisters we are 22 members in the Nemmadi.in family.
On the day the lock-down was announced in India, i sent an email to the whole family promising them one major thing:
no body will be fired!Internal Communication
Transparency
Once we as entrepreneurs realise that our team members are intelligent and emotional beings, things become very easy. I ensured that we had transparent and free for all discussions on what needed to be done to stay alive in the industry. Of course, we get a lot of fluff but also there are nuggets — this means we, as entrepreneurs, need to have the ability to filter and take the appropriate decisions.
Let the team know what the financial situation is, let them understand the repercussions of decisions taken and surely the whole team comes together as one and makes sacrifices for all to survive.
“the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” — this phrase from Star Trek was something that showed the way for us.
Honesty
Once there was an easing of the lock-down we decided to have whom ever wanted to come into the office or work from home do so. That said up from we made a couple of things clear -
- if you work from home you are at an advantage hence you will be taxed appropriately
- if you are not contributing to the company you will be on leave
this set the base and there was absolute clarity
Clarity
Once we started executing and we realised that the inflow would not be sufficient to meet the over all salary of the team, I was transparent & honest with the team about the numbers and clearly explained the methodology to share the revenue.
If revenue for the month was sufficient to cover total salary
then everyone would get their share appropriatelyIf revenue for the month was not sufficient to cover total salary
the salary would be distributed to all as a weighted average of their salaries to the whole && this would be then distributed appropriately.[appropriately] ->
if you came to the office or went to site -> 100% of your share
if you worked from home -> 95% of your share ( refer Honesty )
Insurance
As a responsible organisation with concern towards its family’s health and safety we always had health-insurance for all of our family members, now we added COVID-19 cover too.
External Communication
Its always a good idea to stay in touch with your potential and past clients. We stayed in continuous touch with them via, newsletters, WhatApp, YouTube videos and of course good old phone calls.
Communicate with peers
I was also fortunate to have had a great group of peers who i could ask for help. Groups from SLP and IIMB
I am the CEO and Co-Founder at Nemmadi.in | We are the Quality People in Construction we offer Home Inspection and RWA Take Over from builder