Page 27 - BusinessWest July 6, 2020

Pia Kumar shows off some of the company’s new face shields with ‘skirts,’ one of many new products it has developed in the wake of the pandemic.
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painstaking steps to comply with work regulations put in place in four different states — everything from masks and face shields to social-distancing measures and temperature checks, with most ideas coming from employees. And in a matter of a few short weeks, absenteeism all but disappeared.
Kumar’s phone calls, and those subsequent actions taken by the company, provide some valuable insight into not only her manage- ment style — although it certainly does that — but also into her approach to business and her specific, and very broad, role with the company.
Indeed, while she’s certainly involved with strategy, as that busi- ness card would indicate, and she is involved in virtually every aspect of the business, she’s predominantly focused on people and their well-being. And that goes for the community, as well as the Universal ‘family.’
“It’s strange — in some ways, I feel more connected to people these days. I think it’s because there’s been so much uncertainty and so many questions. There’s so many things we don’t know; it’s almost as if it [the pandemic] has given us a way to come together closer and talk about things more openly.”
This is evidenced by something she calls ‘office hours.’ These are the twice-monthly Zoom meetings she conducts with employees at each plant to help them feel more connected at a time when trav- eling to those plants is far more difficult and, well, people need a connection.
And she’s finding that, while Zoom is certainly a different experi- ence than the in-person office hours she had been conducting until the pandemic (more on those later), they’re in some ways more effective.
“It’s strange — in some ways, I feel more connected to people these days,” she noted. “I think it’s because there’s been so much uncertainty and so many questions. There’s so many things we don’t know; it’s almost as if it [the pandemic] has given us a way to come together closer and talk about things more openly.”
It’s also on display in a number of programs and initiatives she’s helped introduce at the company that are designed to help individ-
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