Q: How has your group participated in community assistance initiatives?

Sri Lanka’s largest community service during this period was facilitated by Manusath Derana.

Together with sponsors, Derana distributed dry rations, masks, medication etc. across the country, contributing millions of rupees towards community support. And our companies – viz. Triad, Mediation and Derana – produced and telecast communications to draw contributions to the ‘Itukama’ national fund at no cost.

Our flagship property Citrus Waskaduwa was the first five-star hotel to be offered to the Sri Lanka Army for use as a quarantine centre – and it continues to host overseas returnees during their quarantine period.

The best way to bounce back is to maintain normalcy; so despite experiencing a dip in revenue, we’ve maintained satisfactory levels of business and sustained salaries as promised.

Depending on each business unit, we have resorted to flexible working hours and maintained physical distancing protocols. In addition, we’ve adhered to all health guidelines in order to protect staff.

Q: And how has your group played a part in mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 crisis?

We didn’t have a quick fix or immediate answers to the COVID 19 crisis but our group understood that the priority should be to support and protect employees rather than focussing on the bottom line.

So we immediately set about assuring our people that their employment was safe and the company they were working for will continue to remunerate them fully even during the lockdown period.

Across the group, our work is completely digitised; and this enabled a virtually seamless shift to working from home (WFH). We were able to continue to operate using digital modes of communication and execution without too many difficulties.

We pride ourselves on being forward thinking and so we made it our focus to carry out proactive initiatives during this time because we experienced a predictable drop in regular business.

Importantly, we shifted the focus to innovating our service offering to suit the prevailing context. I believe our dynamism at this time, along with availability and connectivity, were fundamental to the group’s sustained performance.

We succeeded in creating better value propositions for our employees to ensure their contentment – this enabled them to contribute to the many ways in which we reinvented our service offering, which obviously helps us sustain the business.

Having reassured staff of job security, we looked into their digital needs and provided the necessary devices when required. The group’s data allocation was shared with staff so continued connectivity was possible.

We understood that this was a moment when human needs must be given priority; and to this end, we identified staff members who had limited access to food and ensured that essential items were delivered to their doorsteps during curfew. And we ensured that salaries were credited to their bank accounts without any glitches or delays.

It is our belief that employees are handling the crisis and lockdown in a positive manner. To be honest, we haven’t had a single case of a team member requiring medical or professional guidance.

Our philosophy and relationships within the group are positive, and we’d like to think that our assurances and the way we worked together – even digitally – made a difference and helped them remain upbeat.