Our year started as usual with our team busy traveling to shows in overseas, and all those who are in the office were busy covering other incoming inquiries. Adding on with the Chinese New Year happening in January, our first month of the year passed by in a blink of an eye. However, despite all the busy schedules, we managed to plan a get-together amongst our staff which includes a potluck session and Lion Dance performance.
When we got back from our Chinese New Year break, we start hearing news that the Covid-19 pandemic is getting worse, and with many Organizers and companies (local or overseas) started canceling and postponing scheduled exhibitions. At this point, we started to see many businesses were affected and some companies started to layoff their employees in order to survive the crisis. However, in Hawt Dotz, we always believe that it is important for this Hawties family to all stay together and fight through this crisis together. On March 16th, our Malaysian Government decided to implement the Movement Control Order and all companies are forced to close, and citizens nationwide are all ordered to stay at home.
As an opportunist, we do not see this situation as a crisis, but instead as an opportunity. We have always wanted to try out “Work from Home” (WFH) practice, but there was never a right opportunity for us to try it out, until the Movement Control Order was implemented. Communicating remotely with all staff was difficult on the first day, but the team quickly caught up on the practice and have started running some routine among the team and had our very first General meeting through video conference. We are happy that it all went smooth, and realized that the meeting was more productive than usual days (maybe because everyone is nervous, and do not want to have any information left out as it will be troublesome to get everyone back on again).
Despite that, being away during these two weeks (and another upcoming 14 days from the MCO extension) has also made us treasure our time going and being in the office. For staff with families, being in the office is a mean of some “ME” time. Working in the office also allow us to divide the “WORK” hour, and “LEISURE” hour.
In light of the current situation, our Director, Matthew, believes that all businesses will swing back to full force as how it is before this pandemic. With a longlist of promising projects ahead of us, all we need to do is equip ourselves to fight for the next quarter of the year. Here are some of the upcoming trend that we can observe and fine tune to suit up to our industry:
- Artificial Intelligence
- 5G technology
- The continues rise of remote work /work from home
- The rising of “The Gig Economy”
- Influencer Marketing
- Cashless is the future
“Together, we will walk through this, stronger, wiser and more deeply connected than ever before”.
