Learning to see a larger picture

Tough times and scenario have always taught us the new norms and agility to embrace the practical realities quicker in the interest of business and people.  With pressures mounting for performance from various organization, the real and new term “productivity” is turning new leaf to see the opportunities amidst multi various equilibrium points.  With increasing demand for cost pressure and thereby the profit margins, we have learnt the art of balancing our work – both professionally and personally. In a way, I am one of those who is immensely glad that this pandemic conditions also broke lot of rigidity – be it in organization or at our homes.  

Is WFH truly a great policy?

Despite the difficult times,  many new roles were created and offered.  As work from home was the only available option, we have even video shopped various products thereby forcing the community to embrace digital way.  At the same time, I know many were keen in drawing various reports and analysis for themselves to reassess their consumption or spend patterns.       At a personal level, the pandemic has triggered individuals to reassess their ge spend analytics on our credit and debit cards, various other unnecessary and avoidable expenses that were most time managed recklessly.  This has also further drilled down a sharp focus on how do we keep this going even post restoration of normal conditions..  I am glad that many roles have gone through huge transformation thereby increasing new demands on their role and delivery.  It is undoubtedly true that WFH has put us in more working hours and many of us are waiting to run back to office as we have also experienced this has attached us more closer to our systems even on weekends and extended working hours on regular days.  

I have been emphasizing the need for WFH as a policy in most organization that I had been employed with and had been very unpopular amongst business leaders for this.  This pandemic condition has taught me how dififcult it is to look at the situation from the business managers angle.  I have also heard from many women (for whom I have been vehemently fighting for WFH) are joining hands together unanimously to say “Nooooooooo” to WFH policies as they also realise it isn’t easy.  But we have understood that one need not work from office to prove productivity.  In a way, I am happy that this has warped us into a new professional environment.  Many are even very confident that the businesses will be more resilient in future to any eruption or disturbances irrespective of nature, as we are inching towards a techno savvy environment thus making working from anywhere as a potential option. 

Truth to many was /is bitter

I have understood and also been told that there cant be any better time to collaborate and co-create with our peer or others than this difficult time, reason being we have realized that every single value chain must be holding the grip tight and intact with mutual trust.  This has also taught us the ability to scale up for every job uncertainty and the organizations have also realized that talent is valuable and hence look at all possible ways to ring fence them.  Possibly this could be one of the reasons that many organizations are sending communication to home thanking their support, helping with infrastructure at home, enabling various wellness programs  and many of them are even willing to sponsor them. 

Well all this doesn’t come so easy or as low hung fruit.  There is a cost the employee pays / returns.  As all of us have significantly saved money and time in the form of local commuting, larger focus has been placed on “visible drivers of productivity”. In true sense, its nothing but our KPIs that have also aligned due to drastic change in the business operations. The sad part is many homes have shared infrastructure like laptop / desktop wherein the effective hours of productivity has been bought through leased assets.  Next to sale of N95, it is this business that is rocking in many parts of globe.  Many start up and IT infrastructure tech hubs have brought in the support to various organizations and are also being billed at ease.  So while jobs are cut at one end, I cannot close my eyes to newer ones that have also sprung up!

Jobs now need only talent

IT is unanimously decided and agreed that operations can occur anywhere and target only on the task accomplishment and not force fit employees to compulsively operate from specific work zone.  More unique jobs have sprung up in niche domain like Artificial Intelligence, GPRS base deliverables, Deep Computing etc.  I see lot of job descriptions that emphasize the need to be “Flexible & Agile” and this has almost become a need for every task they re-write in the job spec. It is also good to see increase in manpower need to those roles that can facilitate and promote crucial thinking and ability to manage ambiguity.  Hence the pre-laid condition on “Why do you need so many hires?” has become a partnered approach now to elevate into an interesting question “What value add do these roles bring in ?” I personally feel this is a huge transformation in the minds of emerging and well groomed managers

There is also a good deal of companies that shifted to a larger and better technological support to keep the productivity going and measured with all data points.  This is one of the biggest successes of Google & many companies have shifted to data based decisions thereby bringing the true potential to limelight.  This has also given a morale boost to many performing employees to raise the bar and succeed even further.  You know what I am most happy of today?  I don’t hear managers say “Employee worked on flexi working from home and hence we need to slide down on the performance score”.  Thanks to difficult times that throws open to a different paradigm.  

Costs aren’t getting cheaper

Some of these interesting conversation with few peer group also helped me gain insights that WFH option isn’t cheaper for organization as we think.  As an example, there are skeletal staff that operate from office as we all know. These employees still continue to use office as is, this ideally means, the air conditioning in the office is still on for few but for the complete floor unless employees shift to smaller rooms to operate.   Since these employees visit, sanitizing and cleansing the office environment becomes imperative and there goes another cost. Food, transport, etc shoot the other areas of cost.  Many companies have come forward to take additional costs like internet facility of homes, furniture etc.  Undoubtedly, this has also spun the fabric of innovative solutions for client delivery, optimized quality virtual support for processes and last mile delivery for consumers. Though it hasn’t been long, the momentum of operation to transform various processes has been tremendous and this is only likely to grow further.  

Organization Structures are becoming more promising

There is constant quench for knowledge, skill and ability (KSA) of incumbents who like to take up additional responsibilities or challenge the status quo.  There are more surveys and questionnaire that are launched in various organizations to understand the pulse or voice of the employees to comprehend on the future organization needs.  The CXT team has begun to conduct many virtual discussions with their teams and also pressurize employees to move from a mere “Doer” to a  “Out of box thinker” and thus challenge various current practices and identify some of the most appropriate technologies and processes as they firmly believe that by leveraging innovation, organization will surely break all barriers to productivity.  

Shift in businesses are reshaping

Organizations have come forward to support the society and various white collar workers and socially deprived.  This is a huge shift from a  increased profits to various CSR initiatives that the employees are encouraged to participate and anchor.  Few magnanimous organizations have deployed their “Onbench” employees for various social activities like this hoping for better role and opportunities for them.  That’s truly nice, isn’t? 

As an employee,  I was e-onboarded into my present organization and trust me, there has never been any slag as we thought.  The only glitch is we don’t get to see each other, other than virtual calls. 

There are many managers who have learnt to not only say or talk but also practice the art of getting work done from people alongside their strengths and not nitpick on the so called stone age wisdom – “Areas of Improvement”.  After all struggles, we have also learnt to treat human assets with support systems that could enable further performance not only to the employees to feel belonged with the organization but also for the organization to visualize and experience solid performance.  

Certain things come easy. Some come with difficulty, and many come with true value lessons.   I am happy that this situation has helped us break the conventional methods of operations and look forward to robust mindsets and metrics that focus on forward-looking value creation for businesses.  Like many of you, I am waiting to see the change and embrace the way forward.