A Job Of Work (From Home)

WFH is part of the new norms, or an ingredient of the ‘new normal’. A Gartner poll concludes that 48 per cent of employees will work from home, months after the COVID-19 scare ends. The figure is higher than the 30 per cent before the pandemic. A qualitative survey by Outlook finds that organisations that allow employees to return impose restrictions. Hence, many workers may find that they need to work from both homes and offices, on alternate days or in some other ratio. Take the example of Sabina Dewan, president and executive director of global research entity, JustJobs Network. She continues to shut down her entire office, partly due to health reasons and partly due to public transport constraints. She isn’t hopeful of opening it before next summer. Even then, it may remain shut or operate in a truncated fashion. “The pandemic has changed work models. Newer ones may emerge if the crisis continues,” she says.

R.P. Yadav, CMD of placement agency Genius Consultants, claims that companies reduced office spaces over the last six months. The Covid challenge became a virtue as WFH helped them save operational costs, including on infrastructure. He adds that firms encourage staff to come to office only on some days, or when it is absolutely necessary. This is the new hyb­rid-within-hybrid model—half your staff works only from home, and the other half comes in on some days in a week.

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Hence, co-working spaces emerged as the buzzwords for residential developers. The builders wish to create such spaces in home projects to align with the new realities. “Incorporating them at the design stage in residential or mixed-use plans helps as WFH employees face difficulties due to lack of privacy and infrastructure bottlenecks. Hundreds of workstations can be squeezed into club houses in apartment blocks,” explains Anuj Puri, chairman of ANAROCK Property Consultants.

Given this scenario, it seems imperative for people to prepare for a new brave world. We present tips for both employees and employers on how to cope up with the positives and negatives of WFH—how to accentuate the former, and dent the latter. These can be ‘Work Resolutions 2021’.

Maintain work-home balance

Since you spend the entire day at home—no office, and minimal social interactions—the logical assumption is that WFH has improved work-home balance. With the flexible hours, an employee can spend quality time with her spouse and children, who too are forced to be inside the house. However, the counterintuitive logic is that WFH is disruptive in different ways. Lack of privacy and interference from family members can lead to continuous distractions. Spouses are unable to wriggle out of household chores, which they could when they spent long hours at work. A preliminary study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on human factors/ergonomics stated that the trend benefits workers who need “flexibility” to balance work and family responsibilities. Counters Dinesh Kumar, vice president (HR), Aspire Systems, “Working from home continuously, and for a long time, can build up stress among employees.”

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Safeguard corporate culture

According to Shankar Krishnamoorthy, co-founder and CEO of Synergita, “In remote working, the need to safeguard corporate culture is the biggest challenge for the HR teams. WFH can be highly productive and successful if there is mutual trust (and transparency) between management and managers.” He claims that it worked for his company as there was a “170 per cent in employees sharing check-ins to managers on a continuous basis, and appreciation to the peers”. However, in many cases, the trust will need to evolve. Employers and team leaders, who are used to physical head-counts and visual checks on colleagues and juniors, need to change their mindset. Employees have to show higher involvement. “A culture based on transparency will thrive,” says Kumar. Organisations need to create the right set of checks and balances across hierarchies for WFH to work efficiently, adds Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of Great Learning.

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More gender opportunities

Many women, especially in India, opt out of employment due to domestic pressures of family and children. Others are unable to find the right opportunities that suit their skills and salary aspirations. If WFH takes off, and the demand for outsourced work and consultancy increases, the flexibility may either help women to continue with their work, or to seek new kinds of part-time, but remunerative, work. This is especially true in the cities and towns that are deemed unsafe and insecure. Based on her study, Dewan concludes that it is a double-edged trend. Women from the higher socio-economic groups, who have the luxury to work from home, may benefit. “We will see a new impetus towards cloud-based work as the gig economy grows. Women may be able to tap into some of these opportunities,” she says. The inevitable flipside: given the fact that the family members are home, and there is still nervousness about maids, domestic responsibilities will hamper work.

New leadership skills

A company-specific crisis requires personalised corporate leadership. When the malaise affects a sector, CEOs and CFOs need to think strategically. Once the world economies are down in the dumps, the leaders have to open their minds, and view the situation holistically. At present, a CEO needs to use the three skills together. Within a firm, says Aspire Systems’ Kumar, there has to be clear performance expectations, and open vertical and lateral communication channels. At the sector level, says the Gartner report, corporate goals need to be strategic. Employees cannot be viewed as people with specific skills. What is required is the ability to think in terms of work-flows across the value chain, from the raw materials to the final product in the form of procurement, manufacturing, and distribution. Each sector will throw up different issues, and need unique ans­wers. Economies have crash-landed with different momentum, and intensities, across the globe. This implies the world is a potential source of labour and skills for every company. Explains Nair, “With remote working, employers can recruit the best talent from any nation. Add to it the other quantifiable cost-savings involved, organisations will continue with the WFH options. The lockdowns gave them the time to experiment and do trial runs under compelling circumstances.”

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Employees’ efficiencies

“The new ways to work will require more collaboration among the workers, without having to commute to the office every day,” says Dewan. In fact, as the Gartner report states, this will be done digitally, and through the use of technology. Thus, leaders, managers, and workers will have to rethink goal-setting tactics and evaluation practices across the various management hierarchies. This will apply to vertically- and horizontally-aligned (or flat) companies.

Productivity and efficiency measurements will change. This is crucial because existing studies are not conclusive whether WFH increases or diminishes the quality and quantity of work performed by each employee. Remote working means remote monitoring. New tools and designs have to crop up to achieve these objectives. In addition, the workers will need transition and adjustment time as they strive to adopt and adapt to the unfamiliar work modes.

The ILO feels that employers will have to provide additional support in the form of workstations at homes, and adequate protection to health and psychological wellbeing. “This will likely have future eff­ects in terms of work-related injuries and health problems,” its report cautions. Krishnamoorthy says that managers will have to grapple with issues such as absence of personal interactions with peers, and possible miscommunication along the various reporting layers. In ess­ence, neither the work nor home lives will never be the same in future. Welcome to 2021.