Re-living the Proshore Culture while being Remote
Things have changed a lot in the last 45 days. There has been a huge loss of human lives. The frontlines have been putting their lives at risk, not only theirs but their family too. Proshore would like to express their sincere gratitude to all the people who have been working as frontlines during this lockdown. We must be lucky doing our work in the same way we used to do, but, with some modifications. The major modification is being remote, the rest of the other is more or less similar. Here, we’ll be having a questionnaire with Roshan and Prakash about the culture we’ve been implementing while being remote.
Let’s first begin from where it all started- The beginning of lockdown.
The situation was calm in the beginning but later it turned into a panic situation, on the other hand, the government had implemented lockdown. It seemed management, as well as people at Proshore, were prepared for this situation. Let’s hear from them to be more clear 😊
Q: We weren’t prepared for this kind of pandemic. How have you been able to cope with the situation in this little amount of time?
Prakash: “When this virus was declared as a pandemic, from then, we were more alert. We had several meetings on how to cope with the situation. Slowly, fear emerged as a black cloud on a sunny day. Keeping the current situation in mind, we tested a trial with the “Plus Cloud” team. This trial helped us evaluate future scenarios like the capabilities of an individual, internet-facilities, the basic infrastructure needed, etc. This trial helped us determine the evaluate fundamentals of requirements and necessities which made it easier for us in lockdown days”
Roshan: “The virus case was rising slowly, which led to frequent management meetings. As Prakash said earlier, we first had a trial with the “Plus Cloud” team and this trial made us evaluate different things. From the management side, we were prepared for this situation, but, from the client perspective, it’s a difficult situation. Obviously, due to this pandemic, their startups and business have been a lot affected: either they don’t have money or they are in the state of bankruptcy soon. For this, we’ve kindly negotiated with our clients with the purpose of cost-balance. This turned out to be a win-win situation for both parties. From the management perspective, in this tough situation, companies are facing a problem with employee management. Many companies have decided to deduce salary, or, unable to pay them, and many are even asking people to take unpaid force leave. Many company’s projects are even gone, which even forced them to deduce the employee salary to a certain percentage. I think it’s not bad either because you work less and get paid accordingly, and whenever the company is in crisis, you must accept it because you have no other way. It’s always a win-win situation for employees and companies. But, here at Proshore, we have not deduced the salaries of our remote workers, and the good thing is our company is running well”
Q: As we have been witnessing, you have implemented different remote working protocols… Actually, what sort of culture are you trying to establish in this situation?
Prakash: “We believe in the open culture at Proshore. We try to make best use of methods in such a determined way that this method gives the same output every time. But still, If anyone has any sort of problem, we simply ask them to communicate with the management, and then we go for feedback with the people on the quality of service delivered for solving the problem. We do communicate with every people with the problem they have rather than the opposite. We don’t believe the hierarchy module where position matters above all. We believe we all are human beings by nature. We do have normal talks with our co-founders. We are always friendly with each other, whether at a tea shop or virtual tea talk. The culture is simply similar: the things which we used to do in the Proshore workplace turned to a remote workplace. We have dedicated slack channels to be more engaged and connected with the people where we would have random talks: about anything. We also recently organized an online intra musical program. As a whole, I am really happy with my team that they have been giving their everything, we have no major work-related issues. Project manager do find difficulties sometimes”
Roshan: “ In previous days, we had interactions and engagement at the workplace, but now, we are working from a room to be more precise. There is a feeling of loneliness among many individuals. For extroverts, it’s even more challenging, one of the proshorians mailed me asking for help in this situation and that’s a good thing too, you can come with the problem. If the management has not listened earlier, they don’t open up themselves. That’s why we believe in an open culture. For such an environment to exist virtually, we have been up with different events, like recently we organized live music. We have been replicating offline culture as online culture and it has been good so far”
Q: What kind of impact it might make to the people at proshore with the implementation of this culture?
Prakash: “ As far as in this lockdown, along with work, we have tried to make people closer to each other by implementing different intra campaigns like “Name the Proshorian Challenge”, “Virtual tea talk”, “Khaja Challenges”, etc. People are now more open-up then they used to be at the Workplace. “Name the Proshorian Challenge” have helped to open up the hobbies of the people. What we have found is that people are feeling monotonous while working from home, especially those who are used to the office environments, are finding it difficult to cope with the lockdown. People are lacking the working environment which they used to work at Proshore Workplace. We are working to make people more close to each other with all the initiatives we have taken recently, and we must say it has made a positive impact on the proshorians”
Roshan: “The open-culture is not the new thing we are trying, but, we are developing it step-wise. We’ve asked every proshorians to tell what they think of Proshore and what we saw is shown below. Feelings like family, friends have made us happy because it’s the type of culture we’re trying to establish from a long way back. We want people to take help from people as much possible without hesitation, share the problems, and come up with the solution. This sort of culture we want to practice here. It’s ok to troll every people here at Proshore because we don’t have a hierarchical mentality here. Due to this culture, people don’t find hesitant to open up. Every individual has ideas and they can discuss with other individuals to go with it further. This type of culture helps the individual as well as the company to grow together. This can be seen as a two-way benefit”
Q: As a CTO of the company, what kind of technical opportunities or problems do you see?
Roshan: “It’s time to re-evaluate for everyone especially those who are in the non-technical field. The industry is booming, and technology has helped in such a situation, and we must be ready as well. I see e-commerce stores going from offline to online, restaurants those who didn’t have a digital presence will now seek to take orders online. The manufacturing industry must also make a way for technology as ekoplaza. It might be tough but not impossible, so I see both problems and opportunities in the coming days”
Q: How are you getting it right in making team technically closer to each other?
Roshan: “Firstly, we are all together on Google Meet, where we have different programs running on this platform. We are working more closely than we did at Proshore Workplace, and it proved to be beneficial: People might not be on a desk in the office but, now everyone is online and we are ready to go with a phone call. There have not been any difficulties in making things clear with the people, but, the junior developer finds it difficult to learn from the senior developers because they are not getting proper moment or time to teach them. The only thing Junior developer should understand is they must determine how much should they learn. There’s has not been any challenge till date”
We’re committed to continuing our Proshore Culture from Physical Workplace to Remote WorkPlace, and it has turned out to be good so far. We have been up with different intra-activities as a part of our culture, and we’ll be having more in the coming days. Let’s spend this time wisely with family and with yourselves, and with less fear. We’ll be with a new blog next week, till then enjoy reading. You can read our previous articles as well.
