Business View Magazine | July 2022

66 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 7 is actually producing, which is quite unique.” Another unknown for Epcon these past few years has been how to move forward during the COVID-19 pandemic. “One of our biggest challenges was that we never shut down because we were an essential business throughout COVID,” says Jamaluddin. “In many ways, this was a blessing, but it also came with a lot of challenges. In the beginning, long before vaccines, people didn’t really know what to do because the data on COVID-19 wasn’t very clear.” Balancing the needs of senior employees who were terrified to come to work and young fabricators who were completely unfazed by COVID, Epcon had a wide range of attitudes towards the pandemic to manage. It was important to make everybody feel safe and comfortable coming to work. “Two years is a long time to force someone to do something – you need buy-in and understanding,” Jamaluddin explains. “We needed to figure out how to get the young, healthy person that wasn’t interested in wearing a mask to come to work and to follow the protocols for the sake of the person that is maybe 30 years plus their senior who is at risk or has a family member at risk. So it took a lot of communication to get everyone on the same