A day in the lockdown life of Chris Ogden, CEO of RubiBlue
How has Covid-19 impacted your business?
The pandemic has forced us to move into a fully remote working environment and the lessons it has taught us have been amazing.
We’ve learned more about our people and how they like to work, and how they engage with us and one another.We’ve seen sales impacted by a margin which has caused a delay in our revenue projections. And it has had a huge impact on face-to-face engagements, and on training and sales. But we’ve found a way to do this remotely and it’s working!
How did you prepare for the lockdown?
About two weeks before the lockdown was announced we started to move certain teams to remote working as we could see what was coming. Then we spent a lot of time designing and refining new policies to cater to this move to a remote working environment over the long term. We realised fairly early on that this wasn’t going to be a quick thing and we needed to strategise for the marathon.
What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing during the pandemic?
The ability to scale according to our original projections. We’ve also found that team productivity has increased on some levels, but declined on others. Both these challenges are being steadily overcome with our revised focus and because, as a digital company, we’ve got the right agility to move with the demands of the pandemic.
What sort of assistance will you need going forward?
Hopefully none. However, we have opened up the business to all sorts of thinking and ideas. We’re constantly refining processes so we can achieve our projected results.
If you’re able to operate, what steps are you taking?
We’ve been operational since lockdown on a fully remote level. At Level 4, we started to slowly re-integrate essential personnel into the workplace on a rotational basis. We’ve segregated our workforce into three teams that don’t see each other to really minimise any risk. We’ve worked hard to stick to government guidelines and to ensure that our premises are clean, sterile and safe for our employees.
What measures have you put in place?
We maintain extremely strict social distancing and cleaning and hygiene measures. We have also undertaken daily screening of employees to identify infections and have created a full plan around what we will do, what processes we are to follow if we get a positive result.
We really do believe in our people so we’ve worked with them to create an environment that makes them feel safe and heard in the pandemic.
Are you communicating with your customers?Yes! Even more so now than before. We use telephone calls, virtual meetings and emails to remain constantly engaged with our clients and to find innovative ways of helping them during the pandemic.
How are you offering assistance to your customers who rely on your services?
We ensure that they experience no service disruptions and have stuck to this promise throughout.
What do you predict for the next six months?
It will be different, of that there is no doubt. We’re expecting lower than anticipated financial results and we’re seeing behavioural changes with our clients and customers. What we’re doing now is adapting to those changes in behaviour by developing solutions that are relevant to our customers and the global market.
Now is the time to innovate and experiment. What is RubiBlue doing?
We’re creating solutions that fit in with their changing models of business and behaviour.
It’s been an incredibly exciting process and we’ve really seen some amazing innovations from our teams throughout the lockdown.
What has been your biggest lesson?Things can change in a second. Strategic plans should be adaptable as things unfold and that now, more than ever, we have to drive solution thinking on behalf of our clients.
