WISA: The ticket to efficient workmen onboarding

Digital solutions have been driving efficiencies at L&T Construction ever since we embarked on our journey of digital transformation about four years ago. Since its launch in August 2019, WISA (Workforce Induction & Skills Application) is a digital tool that has gained significant traction with project sites across ICs to manage the end-to-end processes of onboarding and managing the workforce. Its stringent checks and validations enabled site HR to capture information about workmen, cleanly and correctly that helped create a database of nearly 4 lakh workmen by the time the country locked down against the pandemic.

A boon during tough times

The WISA data initially proved to be extremely useful to draw insights about the migratory trends of workmen but, even more critically, turned out to be a boon for the humungous workmen remobilization effort. As part of the onboarding process, WISA captured and validated the mobile numbers of workmen with which the organization was able to reach out to them individually during these tough times. “We ran multiple campaigns using bulk messaging service to create awareness among the workmen about self-hygiene and COVID SOPs,” informs S Anantha Sayana, Chief Digital Officer, L&T. “Since the application also held data about the state of origin of our workmen, we could spread the good word in their native languages to more than 3 lakh workmen.”

The announcement of the lockdown had sent lakhs scurrying to their native places that rapidly depleted the number of workmen at the various L&T Construction sites from around 3.25 lakhs to about 1.25 lakhs and their families. “It was important to keep track and a daily count of these workmen at our various labour colonies,” points out Senior Manager – Digital, Krithika Venkatesh. “WISA was the answer,” she smiles. “It’s QR-based attendance feature enabled sites to do contactless attendance and maintain records of the same.”

WISA hastens return to normal

After the labour exodus, project sites went into overdrive to re-mobilize workmen to push progress. WISA came in handy again for corporate and site HR & IR teams to reach out by sending bulk messages to subcontractors and workmen about the opportunities at various sites across the country. Multiple reach-out campaigns were run again with the support of the IC and site mobilization teams to convince workmen to return to sites post the lockdown.

A most critical criteria to be considered during workmen inductions post the lockdown was their COVID-19 record. It warranted fresh SOPs to ascertain and record if a workman was coming from a COVID-affected area and his subsequent health screenings. “All these validations were incorporated into WISA for sites to monitor their new inductees right from Day 1 to restart operations,” mentions Krithika

The transition from fingerprint-based to contactless attendance as sites was smoothened as sites quickly adopted the attendance feature in WISA that required no additional infrastructure.

The success of any solution rests on quick adoption and ready feedback for further enhancements. “Be it the quality of data or the enhancements, it would not have been possible without the support and continuous feedback from all the IC and site teams,” sums up Anantha.

Today, WISA is a testimony to appreciate the value of quality of data in a central system and the potential of using that data for critical business needs. Another digital solution scores!