Digital Learning: How The Pandemic Became A Catalyst For Change

In life, no matter how difficult the situation we find ourselves in, we should always retain our presence of mind and try to think of a solution to get things done within the constraints, rather than bemoaning over fate. Challenges pave the way for opportunities. Those who are exposed to challenges tend to utilize the best of opportunities.

- Shri V. P. Nandakumar

Companies engaged in the services sector depend a lot on their frontline employees. After all, they deal directly with customers and the image of the company depends entirely on the quality of their interaction with customers. As a leading player in the financial services business, this applies to Manappuram Finance too. And that is why we strongly believe in providing ample training and learning opportunities to our employees. Some time ago, in this magazine’s November 2020 issue, I had written at length about how digital learning had taken off at Manappuram in the aftermath of the pandemic-induced lockdowns (refer the article titled “The new normal at Manappuram”).

As a matter of fact, we had embarked on the digitalisation drive well before the first wave of Covid-19 last year. However, what changed is that after the onset of the pandemic, the speed at which we adopted these transformative changes became almost breathtaking. Within a few days of the lockdown announcement, we succeeded in extending work from home facilities to all our employees. It was a herculean task to remotely connect our 22,000 employees as two-thirds hail from remote locations all over the country. It was, therefore, necessary to provide all required facilities to our employees to enable them to work remotely, and we did this on a war-footing. It could be done only because of all the investments in technology that we have been making over the previous four to five years.