Perstorpers coping with COVID-19 across the world: China
The COVID-19 virus has impacted everybody’s reality. But the effects differ across the world and we each cope with it differently. That’s why we talked to some of our colleagues around the world about what impact they felt and how they are coping with it. We’re kicking off with Dr. Ryen Wang from China; a country that is a few steps ahead of the curve compared to e.g. Europe and the US.
Ryen is a Technical Manager for APAC for our Business Area Animal Nutrition. “I live in Nanjing, China, and am always home based so I didn’t go to our Shanghai office every week. Before the Corona pandemic I would frequently travel with sales to visit customers and dealers for product training and promotion, as well as the occasional problem shooting,” states Ryen. “I have worked from home for almost 3 months, and my family also stay at home. People here voluntarily follow the call from the government and barely go out on the streets. Only to buy absolute necessities. All restaurants and public entertainment places are closed. Daily life is really inconvenienced by this, and you can only connect with friends by phone.”
When discussing the impact this has had on his ability to do his job, he continues “...the impact on our work lives is obviously. Work efficiency went down because we couldn’t plan any visit to colleagues, dealers and customers. To keep our focus we have scheduled periodic calls to share learnings and performance, and we consolidated our product’s Features, Advantages and Benefits (FAB) for local customer communication. To keep in touch with dealers, and to make sure they have a good understanding of our products and technologies, we launched online training sessions with them. We discussed product FAB’s, the latest trial reports and had Q&A sessions to with them. The response was really good from dealers! They have more confidence to promote our products now when the situation returns to normal.”
Being the place where it all started, China is also ahead of the curve. Ryen is starting to notice signs of recovery: “Several companies – including our Shanghai office – are taking turns working from the office. China is now slowly returning to normal. Even schools and universities have a timeline to re-open now. For myself, besides the online training and communication with dealers, I already started visiting customers closed to my city and inside the province. Luckily, thanks to everybody’s unity and support, this situation is almost gone.”
