A Working Model for Complete Work from home for SMBs

The central and several state governments has taken steps towards a very deep social isolation, which may go on for longer than we can imagine right now. This will definitely impact on the regular businesses and day to day operations. At the same time, this is also time of fiscal year end and lot of tasks are pending. Many of us can’t afford to refrain from working. The client-side businesses are also dependent on our ability to deliver for them. In such a situation, it should be our endeavour, how the minimize the impact of work loss, and how we can deliver the maximum.

NASSCOM, the federation of IT companies in India, and one of the most intellectually gifted think-tank in the global information technology fraternity, has also came up with a number of advisories and guidelines on the business continuity policies. While many of the measures are tilted towards a large organization format, the majority of the players are in the small and medium segment with a different reality.

Here I am presenting a simple but effective model of carrying out business in a complete work from home situation. This model is particularly designed by and for the small and medium businesses, either in information technology or with a significant presence of information technology in their operations, especially in the service deliveries. We have built this model over a two weeks period, and tried this for a few consecutive as well single days and fine-tuned as necessary.

The applicability in the other sectors or industries will required to be judged on the merit and case to case basis. The respective business leaders can take the appropriate calls.

To start with, let us first check the readiness, for the team and the organization:

We created a simple checklist for all the team members:

1. System availability – office provided laptops, personal laptops as back up, or only personal PC or laptop for a few members. Personal laptops are thoroughly checked and cleaned up beforehand.

2. Telephone communication availability – primary and secondary numbers updated in the HR list, family and house numbers as back up.

3. Internet availability – everyone should have a broadband or equivalent quality primary network. We assumed that mobile data as the back-up available with everyone.

4. Work-space, electricity – self declaration for a reasonably available quiet and (partially) separated work space. The person may have to make and attend calls to team, client or partners. Also, a reasonably uninterrupted power supply, battery back up is must for UPS.

With these, the organization should be also ready with:

1. Web-based email (access logs, device logs tracked)

2. Virtual Work spaces

3. Web based HRMS, for any emergency or regular HR requirements

4. Web based project management

Most of the organizations of today already are equipped with these. If you do not have, you can quickly get #1 and #2 done. For #3, you have to manage with email approvals and letters. For #4, you have to be innovative or see below.

Create Responsibility Matrix:

Identify the sponsor of the WFH program and the highest-level approver. Normally, the boss.

Identify a program champion to drive the WFH – should be a Delivery/ floor manager.

Team level responsibilities to be handled by Project managers, supported by team leads.

A three-layered responsibility matrix with dual responsibility of Delivery manager and Project Managers/ Project Leads should be sufficient.

Develop an Attendance Protocol:

It is common practice to use biometrics devices for attendance and timesheet requirements. However, this is not possible with a remote working. So we have devised a simple protocol as follows:

“every organization member across the teams and hierarchies, will join a roll call conference, thrice a day. Missing any of the calls will be interpreted as absence” The calls are not more than 15 minutes for a 25 member team.

 Our times are 10 am, 2 pm, 7 pm. You can change the time and frequency as per your suitability.

For large size teams, there can be multiple parallel conference calls. An attendance sheet, dual approved, to be documented and shared every day.

Have a Clear, non-Intrusive Communication Protocol:

Apart from the daily attendance calls, there will be:

·        Scheduled team scrum calls led by PMs/ PLs

·        Scheduled or in prompt technical calls

·        Other management and HR calls – once a day

Objective is to continue the business as usual. The notifications will be over email mandatorily.

Apart from the video conferencing calls, we also created:

·        Organization wide WhatsApp group

·        Team specific WhatsApp group

·        Management WhatsApp group

Communication should be free flowing in these groups. Also, the organization members are open to call or text or WhatsApp anyone in the designated primary and secondary mobile.

We follow and open office policy, the same is reflected in the communication protocol.

Delivery Management

The objective of the WFH program is to ensure delivery without any disruption. So the daily, weekly and monthly delivery plans should be ready with the responsible members, to be circulated across the RACI matrix. EoD status reports are to be shared by the PMs and DMs.

The project management software will be updated every EoD, and the management can check status anytime to understand the most recent status.

Planning for the Program:

You will NOT be able to jump to the program overnight. So think well, plan well. First, I’d suggest to identify a champion (non-project-delivery person she should be)

Step One: move your resources to one or more secured cloud. All the data that you are currently working with, have just finished working with but will need for any follow up. Reference materials, project plans, legal, business and and technical documents. Ensure a very deep access control protocol. Use multiple servers with physically inaccessible storage. Also create a folder with all required software repositories. You don’t know what you may need and when

Step Two: Load the laptops with all required, may be required, might be required, seldom required data. Discrete efficiently who needs what.

Step Three: Sensitize the team on the responsibilities in a WFH scenario. Reiterate the dos and don’ts. Circulate written plans with list of activities, policies, prerogatives.

Step Four: Run trials. Single day, consecutive day. By team. Then full scale. Note all the points of difficulties, concerns, questions. Fine tune the model. Sensitize the team on the new protocol. Repeat. Define success. Celebrate success, virtually, with a promise to replicate in physical.

Once you are confident, roll in full. Be ready to change on the fly. Prepared for changing the wheels while the car is running.

Tools

To achieve all the above, we have been heavily dependent upon the cloud and SaaS tools. Our stack of tools is as follows, and I have added alternative tools in the parentheses. In fact, these tools will make your life super easy, if you can use them to the best.

1.      Cloud Email – G Suite (Office 365, Outlook Web Access, any open source email tool)

2.      File Sharing – Google Drive [as part of our G Suite Business] (One Drive, Dropbox)

3.      Video Conference – Google Meet [primary], GoToMeeting [secondary] (Skype, join.me)

4.      Audio Conference – Free Conference Call [we have a business account to include many people] (patch others in regular mobile phone network)

5.      Quick sharing – Slack [for small data files, codes snippets, logs for debugging etc.]

6.      Project Management – Asana [our long time favourite]

7.      Shared workspace – AWS VMs. We also use Google colab (Azure, G Cloud)

8.      Marketing and CRM – Hubspot

9.      Work Sharing – Team Viewer

10.  Chatting and quick exchanges – WhatsApp (SMS)

Check Legal Obligation towards Clients!

It is important that your client knows about this program. While no sensible person will oppose to the step you are taking, it is always important that take the client in to confidence. The most important aspect is that of data security. Circulate again your data security policies and safe guards and boost confident. Use secured cloud servers for data storage. Discourage local storage of data completely.

Since many of the clients lends their virtual servers for the project work, and the virtual servers are controlled by data protection policies enforced, the concern of data security may be reduced.

Check your contract again. The BCP must be there with a WHF policy in force. If not, amend the contract with a change request. Right now, manage with a mail. Sign the change request at the first opportunity.

Few More Finer Points

It is a significant change and require change management. Not everyone will be equally motivated. Not everyone will work in the same time. Even at the same pace. A close monitoring and motivation will be required.

The social and friendly atmosphere will be missing. Not everyone is a nerd who will enjoy isolation. In fact, most will not enjoy after a few days. Create some off work, cheer up events. A simple conference to gossip, discuss a sporting event, or enjoying a movie virtually in the same time can be a great idea.

For us also it is an absolute first. There will be hiccups and we are ready for the same. Together, we will make it a success, and there will be no regret that we have achieved less.