MUMBAI: In order to minimize the risk of a severe, broad based Covid-19 outbreak in India, all businesses are taking a variety of measures to prevent the spread of infection, and trying to ensure the health and safety of all their employees, their families and the broader societal ecosystem around them.
Given the critical role that PhonePe plays in India’s digital payments ecosystem, we are working around the clock to ensure that all our services, including customer support & merchant support, continue to run seamlessly 24/7 without any sort of disruption. However, we need to balance this broader societal responsibility, with our responsibility to protect the health and safety of all our employees, contractors and extended workforce.
Accordingly, PhonePe has taken the following measures to ensure that our services continue to be fully operational 24*7, while keeping our employees safe and out from harm’s way.
Mandatory WFH policy for ALL employees till March 31st:
· On March 12th, 2020, we introduced a mandatory work from home (WFH) policy for all our corporate office employees.
· On March 21st, 2020, we have extended this policy for ALL our employees and ALL our contractors. This means all PhonePe employees, including ~8,500 offline sales agents and ~1500 customer service agents across the country, including all our 3rd-party contract workers, have been mandated to work from home. This decision has been taken to minimize exposure not only to PhonePe employees and their families, but also for the health and safety of the merchant partners they visit.
· Further, PhonePe is committed to paying all our employees and contractor workers, including the entire offline sales agents, their full salaries throughout the WFH policy. This decision has been taken to ensure that none of our employees and their families are adversely impacted, from a financial standpoint, while we all fight the scourge of coronavirus over the days and weeks to come.
· This WFH policy is in effect till March 31st for now. We will review the situation next week, and extend the WFH policy if required.
What this means for various stakeholders:
1. Customer Service: All our customer service teams across the country are mandatorily working from home, trying to ensure that they respond to customer issues speedily. However, since our call-center facilities have been shut down temporarily, response to call-based enquiries will be delayed. So we request all customers to log all their questions and concerns via the PhonePe app itself. Just click on the Help (?) icon on the app homepage, follow the menu and lodge your tickets please.
2. Merchant Assistance: Our offline merchant partners can reach out to our designated merchant helpdesk at [email protected] or via the ‘PhonePe for Business’ app 24x7 support for any issues. Additionally, the offline sales team members will be in touch with their associated merchants remotely and will be available on call to get any issues resolved.
3. New Hires: All new employees scheduled to join PhonePe this month are being inducted and onboarded remotely. We have a simple message for all new PhonePe_rs — “Do not worry! We are committed to your safety and can’t wait to get you started!”
4. Candidate Interviews: All interviews for potential new hires have been moved completely to video conferencing mode since March 12th. We will continue hiring and issuing new job offers during the WFH window.
Steri-fumigation of all PhonePe offices: As a precautionary measure, we have also carried out steri-fumigation treatment for all our office facilities. We are also taking all other precautions in line with the recommendations of the medical fraternity, these include providing information on testing centres/hospitals and isolation wards, equipping people with hand hygiene products, etc.
