Atul Tendulkar - The Pathfinders

Vice President, Facilities Management, DLF Home Developers Ltd

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Covid-19 has impacted all the industries but obviously it’s magnitude is more severely felt by physical labor-intensive sectors like facilities management where services are personally rendered to the customers on the sites and quality of delivery largely depends on one-on-one interaction under community building which finally is the icing on the cake.

Naturally, without that human touch and cozy proximity there is a lurking risk of the ever-important customer experience getting reduced to mere mechanical and monotonous chores. Even a basic warm gesture of smile and touch is eclipsed by mask, gloves, and other essential PPEs. And while on one side, there’s an ever-increasing inclination towards mechanisation and automation to reduce the likelihood of infection spread is resulting in job loss for FM operatives, on the other side strict implementation of stringent safety measures are alienating them from their clients in some way. Therefore, seasoned industry players are deploying innovative and effective practices to close the gap by constantly exploring and exercising better ways of communication, awareness, training, use of latest technologies mushrooming lately in the market are some of the most effective and mitigative measures. Today, the workforce in the industry are required to be updated on the latest systems launched in the market, news of pandemic’s spread, advisories released by government and health organisation’s from time to time and also be ever flexible to adapt to new ways of managing operations and administration like never before. But as they say “tough gets going when going gets tough,” true industry professionals are coping up with ever-changing situations and unforeseen challenges pretty well.