Citec has carefully monitored and followed the global and local guidelines of authorities in all health and safety matters during the COVID-19 period. A special corona task force team led by Chief Development Officer Laura Kauppinen, as well as an extended team, with strong decision-making mandate was put into place right from the outbreak of the virus. The health & safety of our staff is a top priority. The second target was to ensure project deliverables with the right quality, and to consequently secure business contingency for each key customer.
In all Citec’s European countries, home office work is very common, whereas in India the custom is to work, almost without exception, in the company offices. Citec today has approximately 500 employees in India, with the majority being in Mumbai and a smaller team located in Pune. We managed to arrange solid IT solutions for all staff very quickly in Mumbai and Pune and succeeded to maintain the identically high efficiency level as we have in the office mode. We received questions also from stakeholders whether our operations in India is functioning despite the unfortunate situation – we can proudly confirm and say “Yes, fully”.
“First of all, I want sincerely thank our personnel for excellent flexibility and persistency during the COVID-19 situation. The challenges, however, continue in the market and we need to continue to focus on the things that we can affect – our sales, deliverables and projects”, says Johan Westermarck, CEO. “The requirement for mandatory home office way of working came very quickly upon us very fast in India as the governmental restrictions were escalating in severeness. For us, time is money and we must have operations running to ensure contingency”, says Johan. I feel proud of our IT department solving the challenge and arranging a move to home office mode for 500 persons so rapidly. Following home office survey feedback and continuously improving, listening and acting, is the way we at Citec decided to work with the challenges. From crises improvements arise – now we can switch very smoothly in case of changing situations. Leadership is another point I want to stress. Our strong leadership in India, headed by Vice President Nasir Mulani and his management team, has been a tremendous advantage in securing the operations and deliverables to our customers. Flexibility and strong local management capability has been crucial success factors”, Johan ends.
