Working From Home – Visualization Tool

Challenge & Selection:

We as the nation of our mother earth have faced a new situation with the occurrence of Covid-19. It  was a big challenge for most of companies to proof how resilience they are and to ensure work  sustainability under such huge change in the working and living situation. We have challenged by  this pandemic in so many ways and maintaining social distancing and health measurement was one  of the biggest challenges in my department. We are a big department of more than 3 thousand  employees and to maintain social distancing while carrying on business was a big challenge to us.  Some other departments managed to do this easily as their type of business, such as HR and finance,  are not core business for the company as us, Drilling and Workover. We struggled with the number  of laptops that we own and can provide to our employees to allow them functioning while working  from home. This has to be done while protecting company data and security. Currently we are using  PCs and we are using a very high security programs and walls as our company is a target for a lot of  hacking attempts. The number of employees is huge and the need of complying with social  distancing is vital. I have used the visualization tool in this process and in trying to communicate  ideas and possibilities to our stakeholders and the IT department. Visualization is the perfect tool for  this situation to show current, future and possibilities in a more effective way. To present data in  visual way that would help to easily understand and integrate different data to produce better  overall picture that allow stakeholders to see the possibilities and make efficient decisions. I have  used the infographic tool to represent my data specially that our employees are located in many  areas and their so their customers.

Application:

My team started this exercise by collecting all available data. How many laptops that we owned,  how many users, who are the key employees who can't work from home, productivity level during  the past year, performance during the lockdown, office space and blueprint of our buildings and any  other data that would provide better insight on the situation. We interviewed our stakeholders,  managers & employees to get more information on what happened and what need to be improved  to prevent it in the future. We gathered information from the IT department on information leakage  and security threats during the pandemic.

When our data was ready, we created graphs and clipboards that connected all the data in a visual  way. Number of laptops Vs. Users, Offices & Cubical designs Vs. required social distancing space,  Number of information security threats during the pandemic Vs. before, number of Covid-19 cases  Before and after applying the working from home instructions. We have conducted two workshops  one with the department managers and executives and the second was with selected employees  and we ensure diversity. In both meetings we used our graphs and we provided bards and sticky  notes to participants to add to the data and give their feedbacks and ideas. The two workshops were  to ensure total understanding of the current situation, knowing what do we want to reach in the  future and brain storming sessions.  Managers were able to see the current situation and what we  want to achieve in the future, which is being ready for such circumstances in the future without  disturbing our business.

We gathered many ideas such as offices' redesigning, employees' lockdown within company  facilities, replacing the offices' PCs with laptops for all users and many other ideas which led to our  final solution. All ideas had been submitted to the innovation team who evaluated each and

everyone of them with all stakeholders such as IT & office services to explore the possibility of  applying them. We came up with recommending the idea of replacing all our PCs in the office with  laptops that can be used in home. We started with one division in the department and whenever we  have a suspected case, he/she has to work from home using his/her office laptop with special  granted access when needed. This was a very practical solution that will enable us to continue  working under any circumstances that will require big number of our employees to work from home.  It will ensure that employee has all his data and programs in his laptop without a need to reinstall  them again in the new machine.

Insight & Approach:

It was a great exercise showed me how visual are most people. I witnessed how can we connect the  dots, finding gaps and filling them, interacting with presented data and integrated them to find a  solution. Presenting visuals helped mangers and employees to not only see what they know but also  to look into the other aspects that they don't know about. All the inputs helped to create more ideas  and synergy in approaching and tackling the problem that we are facing. The visuals help to identify  the root causes of it and how can we address it in the future with practical solution.

The organized visuals enable us to save time could be consumed in showing the relationships  between the problem components, stakeholders and other threats. It created and stated everything  clear and connected. I have always believed on simplifying ideas, data and proposals to focus more  on addressing them. Visualization is one effective tool of conveying your message and helping others  to understand your objectives, problems and imagination.

