July-Aug 2020

But the company’s CEO, Reza Jahangiri, grasped early on that COVID-19 posed a significant threat, Lieber says. That recognition allowed company leaders to swing into action while relying on what was already in place. “In this particular case, I think we had the basic infrastructure and resourcefulness to be able to handle it, even though the plan did not specifically contemplate a pandemic,” says Lieber, who also praised the leadership of Michael Josephs, AAG’s chief information officer, and Martin Lenoir, its chief operating officer and chief marketing officer. Before states began issuing stay-at-home orders, AAG had started testing the ability of its staff to work remotely, even in areas like customer service, which traditionally functions in a highly centralized environment. AAG started the transition the week of March 9. Within ten days, the company had 85 percent of its nearly 1,300 employees working remotely and 100 percent within 15 days, Lieber explains. And operations had vir- tually no downtime or loss of service. “I would say we’re all very pleasantly surprised at the ability to be at least as effective as we work from home,” he says. Part of the process involved managers physically dis- tributing computer equipment to employees, while main- taining social distance, Lieber says. AAG’s solid vendor relationships ensured it had the equipment it needed. For the future, though, the company will consider ensuring employees already have tools, such as thin cli- ents, they can use to work from home, Lieber comments. Thin clients are lightweight computers, about the size of routers, that expedite remote connections to a server. The server then does the work of running software that a tradi- tional PC would do. Another factor in AAG’s successful transition was communication, Lieber adds. Rebecca Pacillas, the com- pany’s senior vice president of human resources, helped employees understand what was happening and why. In addition, AAG developed safety guidelines for vendors, such as appraisers and settlement agents. It dis- tributed the guidelines to customers so they would know what to expect, and it included a phone number to call with any complaints. Some AAG employees remain in the office to handle essential physical documents, Lieber says. But they are widely dispersed and outfitted with masks, gloves and wipes. “We’ve taken social distancing to the max,” he says. “Nobody’s even close to six feet proximate to each other.” When elected officials were debating on how and when to relax social distancing guidelines and let businesses reopen their physical locations, John Button, CEO of San Diego-based technology provider ReverseVision, was contemplating the longer-term impact of the sudden shift to remote work. “I find it hard to imagine that people won’t learn from the experience and say to themselves, ‘Why don’t we do way more virtual business?’” he says. He also expected the COVID-19 crisis to accelerate efforts to make reverse mortgage lending more digital, especially at closing, where so-called wet signatures are still required. Still, it wasn’t easy even for a tech company to go virtual. ReverseVision’s plan initially called for its roughly 30 employees to work from home during the pandemic, since they already had that ability, Button says. But the plan was tweaked to have two employees continue coming into the office each day on a rotating schedule. The goal was to ensure nothing was overlooked, accord- ing to Button. The company followed the process for a few days but ultimately decided all work could be done remotely, with a few exceptions. One is the audiovisual system for con- ducting large training webinars. “That’s a little hard to repli- cate at home, so folks go in to use that,” Button says. He said technology likely will help fill the gaps in remote working, though he acknowledges not all the gaps can be filled. Relationships change when employees disperse to home offices, even when they’re adept at using communication apps like Zoom and Slack. Spontaneous conversations that lead to new ideas are less common. “There ultimately is no true substitute for face-to-face human interaction, particularly in idea-based businesses like software,” says Button. “And I certainly would expect as a business that when our 30 people can be together again, we’ll have ourselves a nice little party.” New Normal continued from page 19 John Button 20 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JULY-AUGUST 2020