Page 26 - BusinessWest July 6, 2020

Women in Business
In the Right Mold
Universal Plastics’ Pia Kumar Puts the Focus on Work-life Balance
By George O’Brien
ack in mid-March, Pia Kumar recalls, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a good deal of
absenteeism at the five plants within the Universal Plastics fold — maybe 40% by her estimate, a number that spoke volumes about the high levels of fear and anxiety within the work- force.
So Kumar, who co-owns the Uni- versal family of businesses with her husband, Jay, and has the title ‘Chief Strategy Officer’ printed on her business card, did what she says comes naturally to her.
“I wanted to understand what we could do together as a business to make sure they could come back in and do the essential work we were doing.”
She got on the phone.
“I called every single employee that was not here and talked to them about their concerns,” she told BusinessWest, noting that this was maybe 200 people across the five facilities. “In some cases, I talked to their wives, their husbands, their children; I wanted to understand what we could do together as a busi- ness to make sure they could come back in and do the essential work we were doing.
“We make the diagnostic machines used to test for COVID, so we needed to come back in and get working, but we needed to keep people safe,” she went on. “There was a lot of uncertainty, and we needed to establish trust.”
The company earned it by taking
Pia Kumar, ‘chief strategy officer’ at Universal Plastics.
26 JULY 6, 2020 WOMEN IN BUSINESS BusinessWest