Heaptalk, Jakarta – During a pandemic, many companies have to adapt to new behavior. One of the insightful lessons is Lazada Indonesia. The top five leading marketplaces have to adapt to create a working environment that remains productive and enjoyable. Despite maintaining their positioning as the leading eCommerce in South East Asia, it is fairly challenging to have a deep concern for their employees (one of the most important is health). It also has prevailed for its 10,000 employees across six leading countries in South East Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia).
For Lazada, employee health is the most important thing they always protect. Therefore they are concerned too much about any possibility of how the transmission of the virus can occur. Particularly, through too intense direct interaction between employees, too much crowd, and the indisciplinary of health-concern, such as neglecting to wear a mask and not washing hands with soap.
So that health is a major concern for the Lazadians (the term for Lazada employees) to be maintained. So, it has become common in every morning routine to give each other updates about their respective health conditions. As told by Sarah Shafitri, every morning, every employee must do a daily check-in, “if there are any symptoms, we have to tell our colleagues.”
The important point is that openness becomes a standard that every employee must keep remain. In this matter, the employee does not miss to tell a truthful update regarding their health conditions. So that when the worst case occurs, other employees can back up. Likeably, the Lazada working culture highly respects transparency, especially when conferring the behavior of its employees, where 80% of whom are millennials, are very happy to be able to build engagement among them with the supports of the environment for their collaborative aspects so that it defines the company value.
This aspect is also always be maintained by Indonesian Lazadians in terms of interacting with their tenants, especially when the pandemic hit the nations. They must always raise creative ideas to assert Lazada’s positioning as the eCommerce market leader in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Thus, Lazadians often do a lot of cross knowledge — learn what strategies are applied from their tenants outside Indonesia, whether it is effective or not to be applied here, and the opportunity to reach more user engagement — of course, with several adjustments.
And as Lazadians mostly don’t even have standard SOPs, such as following work guidance whose day-to-day activities have been defined. Instead, they are required to be more creative. Somehow, care we work, what approach we use is not really a problem. The most important thing is to be able to have a positive impact on the company.
Directions are also almost non-existent. Instead, everyone should be able to inline with the team quickly. Even without instructions, they have to know what to do, with whom they have to coordinate, and what approach to take. Here, there is no distance between people and head level, manager level, senior level, and junior level. All can blend.
Haikal Bekti, Senior Vice President of Traffic Operations & Seller Engagement Team Lazada, shared his bright and side during a talk show raising a topic of how working in top eCommerce like Lazada maintains good coordination with the team is something that should not be missed or even diminished in the slightest. As someone responsible for Lazada’s traffic performance rate, he must ensure the user experience is running impeccably. Moreover, this application is used by the six most occupied countries in South East Asia – with multi-dimensional business practices considered it as a SuperApp.
“If formerly we often did meeting directly, now all is done in distance and remote,” recalled Haikal. Exactly, all Lazadians feel this working shifting sometimes gives them longing moments as they missed off some of the activities. Where there are moments when interacting with other people, chitting and chatting, holding a standup meeting, brewing a coffee concurrently, or just saying “hay” when we pass each other, let’s say just getting into the toilet.
Likewise, some routines to go to the office have switched. That is to say, experiencing traffic jams on the road, taking public transportation, to walk outside the building to find food. Now, in the period of working from home (WFH), the office and daily routines at home seem to be inseparable. As Sarah said, every day after waking up, she is binding into the office because her office was less than two meters from the bed.
However, that does not mean the work becomes easier to put aside. Haikal said, even when working from home, it actually edifies people to be more disciplined. The reason is that everyone has a limited time, almost no idle, and most often occupied. So if somehow we need time to arrange a meeting with a number of our colleagues, we have to set the time first and be on-time and efficient. In contrast to the pre-pandemic period, we can poke our colleagues at any time if we want to arrange a meeting such as dine talk or in the room.
However, this shift in working culture does not reduce the essence of working at Lazada itself as a place to learn. According to Evelyn Yonathan, Chief People Officer of Lazada Indonesia, the environment here allows employees to develop themselves, i.e., learning about eCommerce business, leadership, building connections, and showing their progressive performance. Of course, it is also accompanied by rewards that are relevant to the employee’s achievement.
In fact, Evelyn said, for Lazadian talents who have high curiosity and are willing to explore themselves, there is a working system that allows them to try other positions. If the talent has a day-to-day role as a public relations, for example, they may try other positions such as in people success or human resources, as long as their competence and background are aligned. And, of course, the KPI (key performance indicator) that will be carried out will remain fairly. If they can reach, they can get appreciation like numerations, promotions, to ESOP (Employee Stock Option Program).
This is an important factor so that every employee is encouraged to give their best performance. Plus, the company must ensure the security aspect of career continuity that it is conveyed to employees. Since Lazada is backed by dominant funding from the Alibaba Group, it seems that there is nothing to worry about anymore.
