The challenge
One HR manager, hundreds of distress calls, and a crisis that couldn't wait
In April 2021, India's second Covid-19 wave was at its peak. Employees and their families were desperately searching for ICU beds, oxygen, Remdesivir, and plasma donors. The calls were coming in faster than any one person could handle.
Aarfa Shaikh, Senior Manager for People Success at Bizongo, found herself at the centre of it all. She wanted to help every employee in distress, but the volume of requests, the need to verify each lead, and the limits of a single person's network made it nearly impossible to respond quickly enough.
- Overwhelming volume of urgent requests, employees and families were calling constantly for help accessing ICU beds, oxygen supplies, Remdesivir injections, and plasma donors. The HR team had no scalable way to triage and respond to every request in time.
- Individual networks couldn't move fast enough, Aarfa was manually reaching out through her own contacts to source leads and verify them one by one. This process was too slow when lives were at stake and delays were measured in hours, not days.
- No shared space for employees to help each other, Bizongo had 250 employees distributed across the country. Each person likely had contacts and resources that could help others, but there was no platform to pool that collective knowledge and act on it quickly.
The solution
A single community group that mobilized the entire company in days
Trusting the strength of the Bizongo employee community, Aarfa created a 'Bizongo COVID Support' group on Empuls. She invited employees to post requests for help, share verified leads, and exchange information with their peers in real time.
Within days, more than half of Bizongo's employees had joined the group. What had started as one person trying to help became a coordinated, company-wide support network, moving faster and reaching further than any individual effort could.
- A dedicated support community on Empuls, the Bizongo COVID Support group gave every employee a single place to request help, share contacts, and volunteer resources, removing the friction of fragmented WhatsApp groups and personal calls.
- Rapid collective verification of leads, instead of Aarfa verifying every lead alone, employees across the network could cross-check information in real time, significantly cutting down the time needed to confirm whether a lead was actionable.
- Peer-driven coverage across locations, with employees distributed across India, the community group effectively activated a nationwide support network, connecting people with local contacts, nearby resources, and on-ground assistance far beyond what a central HR team could coordinate.
- Pulse surveys to understand who needed help most, Bizongo ran regular wellbeing pulse checks through Empuls surveys during the crisis, helping HR identify employees who were struggling silently and ensure no one fell through the cracks while the support community focused on urgent medical needs.
The results
Four employees helped in a week and a community that kept going
The Bizongo COVID Support group delivered results that would have been impossible through individual effort. Critical needs were met in hours, not days or weeks. And the community that formed around this crisis did not dissolve when the emergency passed.
- Remdesivir delivered at 2 am, an urgent request for Remdesivir was posted on the group and fulfilled the same night. A medication that would have taken days to source through normal channels was delivered within hours.
- Plasma donor found three hours ahead of deadline, a request for a plasma donor needed by 3 pm was fulfilled at 12 pm, giving the family time to prepare and reducing the stress of a race against the clock.
- Employee's father transferred from a remote location within three hours, when an employee's father needed to be moved to a city hospital from a remote location, the community coordinated transportation and logistics and had it resolved within three hours.
- Isolated employee received meals from colleagues nearby, an employee living alone under isolation posted on the group and colleagues in close proximity stepped in to provide meals, turning a moment of vulnerability into one of genuine human connection.