Challenge

I work in a Compliance function for a multi-national Bank which has presence in more  than 65 countries across the globe. Apart from my Regulation Compliance work, I also  am an Innovation Champion and participate in various Innovation challenges, idea  generation activities aimed at streamlining the operations and BAU mundane  activities.

Covid-19 pandemic has hit most of the countries where our Bank has a presence and  due to lock down situation in multiple countries, majority of our staff are working from  home currently.

Working from home is not a great option as it sounds, when it comes to a long term  arrangement, similar to what we are currently experiencing. It comes with multiple  challenges both mental and physical and could potentially have a severe negative  impact on staff.

The challenge we picked was “Future ways of working - learning from our experiences  during the COVID situation” and the intent was to gather ideas on how to overcome  the challenges in case a similar situation arises in future.

The challenge was further bifurcated into two broad themes.

a) How do we ensure that the staff working from home are at the best of mental

and physical health?

b) What support/infrastructure should be made available to staff, if we resume

working from office in near term, whilst the pandemic has still not been  controlled to a large extent.

Selection

For these challenges, we picked up ‘Mind Mapping’ technique, as we thought it would  best fit the current challenge and help us generate multiple ideas

A mind map is a graphical way to represent ideas and concepts. It is a visual thinking  tool that helps structuring information, helping you to better analyze, comprehend,  synthesize, recall and generate new ideas.

Application

We started this process by setting up a 2 days dedicated workshop/hothouse of 2  hours each.  This was a virtual work via Zoom call with 30 team members across group  Compliance teams and its sub-functions were invited.

On the first day of the workshop, we made 4 teams of 7 colleagues per team and  advised individuals within each team to jot down the top challenges they have faced  as part of their ‘work from home’ experience. Every team had approx. 30 mins to think  through and come up with the most challenging aspects they experienced in last 2  months when working from home.

As an outcome of this activity, there were almost 35-40 challenges across all teams  were gathered. From these 35-40 challenges, after making the groups of most  common themes, following 4 challenges were selected as the most commonly  experienced challenges across all members

On the 2nd day of the workshop; again 4 teams were created to ideate around the  best possible solutions which could be shared with the Executive Committee for  implementation.

Each team was assigned one of the four top challenge identified as part of the day 1  workshop and advised to ideate and come up with;

a) Solutions which are very critical to implement but may require funding and may

take little longer to implement

b) Solutions can be implemented immediately at no extra cost.

Within each team we asked the team members to use virtual white board and type  their proposed solutions in 20 mins. After each team member completed this activity,  the solutions were again grouped into common themes. After every team member  was asked to;

a) Assign 3 individual     (stars) for the top 3 ideas they think would be very critical

to implement but may require funding

b) Assign 3 individual   (Hearts)for the top 3 ideas they think would be easy to

implement immediately at no extra cost.

Basis this activity, 3 ideas/solutions with most Stars & Most hearts from each group were  finalized.

Lack of

Work – Life

Balance

Physical and  Mental well

being

Lack of  social

connect

Connectivity  and other IT

Issues

For example, following Ideas received the most stars in a particular group

And

Following ideas received the most hearts in a particular group

The groups were then merged back to the main group and each group presented to  the larger audience their top ideas/solutions and why they think these would help to  organization to overcome the challenges staff faced during the Covid-19 situation  and if a similar situation arise in future, how these ideas could be implemented.

The top shortlisted ideas will now be shared with Senior Management for  implementation.

Insight

What I have learned from conducting this exercise with as large group of people is  that while people work for the same organization and the same function, as they are  based across different geographies, they may have different challenges.  And hence  techniques like mind mapping can help the team to define the most common themes  for these challenges by brainstorming/group discussions.

In the ideation process, using the whiteboard can help the group to pen down multiple  ideas and the entire group get the visibility to the potential solutions/avenues to  overcome the challenge. By allowing remote voting (Assigning stars and hearts), the  group can easily arrive at the best suitable solutions unanimously. The group can  discuss pros and cons of each solution or the highest voted solutions and can put forth

Reimbursement to staff

for any Computer

Accessories purchased

for office work e.g.

Monitor Screens or Tabs

Tie ups with Health

Centres/Hospitals for  discounted treatments

and tests

Additional Insurance  coverage in the staff  insurnace policies to  cover family members

Allow staff to carry

forward leaves to next  year as they could not  take any leaves during

this period

Allow staff to take short

breaks for 15-30 mins

during the working day

Virtual Sessions for staff  on Immunity Boosting,  Stress Management,

Home exercise

each solution to the senior management with holistic and 360-degree view for ease of  assessment and implementation.

Approach.

Next time for a similar group ideation exercise, I would like explore the visualization  technique to start with. Focusing on one specific solution (from one of the above  solutions), we can use visualization tool to further elaborate how the solution can be  best implemented and can have far reaching positive impact on the staff.  Visualization tool can help me explore further possibilities which we may not have even  seen or anticipated.

