Management

Published: Dec 29, 2021
Updated: Dec 29, 2021

WFH no substitute for the office internaction

WFH no substitute for the office internaction

Necessity is the mother of invention as well as change, and the Covid-19 pandemic has changed our lives in ways we cannot yet fathom. Working online has required maintaining troublefree gadgets, jottings, a gist of transactions, use of videos and slides for presentations.

To what extent employees take work seriously is a conjecture. Many require cajoling, reminding and even the threat of disciplinary action. Perceptions, etiquettes, work ethos and style of functioning differ widely from small business to multi-national corporations to public sector enterprises and authorities. Whether the work ethos differs or not, supervision influences effectiveness. Employees need the guidance of seniors, peers and juniors. Exceptions apart, distractions at home are a negative factor. At a higher level of work, body language and tone, tenor and voice modulations in conversations play a significant part. Hence, the role and importance of working in an office atmosphere cannot be substituted. No one knows how long working at home will continue and what its long-term impact on employee habits will be – it depends on enterprises and circumstances.

Challenges of WFH: During the peak of the Covid-19 lockdown, there was no alternative but to adopt online working as an inevitable stop-gap arrangement. But for appropriate technology that made it feasible, there would have been hardly any work. Perforce, office-goers have to depend on technology support, resources and facilities nearer home for setting right technical glitches. Professionals who have youngsters at home can also face irritants. There may be cases of job loss for family members. Further, young professionals may be living in joint families where they have to obey the directions of seniors. Working at home leads to frictions. Worrying makes people think of alternatives. One innovation is audio/video conferencing, which has in recent years been the case with some corporate board meetings and business meetings. Under the Companies Act, 2013, video conferencing is allowed.

Question of suitability: Online work and teaching have made people spend more time in attending to children’s educational needs. With such diversions, some parents cannot pursue their work diligently. They need to assist their children at the cost of their own pursuits. There are complaints that in rural and urban towns new office entrants face the problem of their families not understanding the changing work styles, and it creates frictions.

While technology-based work in offices, factories and elsewhere is inevitable in the short term, the country cannot continue with the new system. There should be alternatives by way of permutations and combinations of safety and physical presence, depending on situations. Thanks to information and communications technologies, noteworthy changes have happened in enterprises and in the educational field. Many techniques and methods have been modified as we cannot duplicate everything, since the internet, power connections, and road and transport infrastructure are poor in most areas and people are not yet tech-savvy.

Need-based working style: This is a mixed success. Where top management takes a safe stand, employees work from home. A distinction has been drawn between essential services and normal (non-essential) items in the social and economic area. Another category is that of money managers who carry on cash transactions, or in common and bigger transactions with institutional dealers of capital and money. Hospitals, chemists and druggists, municipalities and cleaning services which are essential services work almost as ‘normal’ and it is justified from a social angle. Nothing moves in modern society without money, including supplies of foodstuffs and other essentials for day-to-day life and services like cleaning and other personal services.

To cite an instance, in banks like IDBI Bank, officials cover their faces completely and sit behind plastic enclosures with only a small window to give and receive transactionrelated documents and papers. In most other banks, officials sit as in the past. Thick plastic sheets are fixed between the front and back row in autos, taxis, hired cars and buses. Some work on alternate days and make suitable changes in seating arrangements. Essential services are in open areas. If the same care taken in respect of ‘essential services’ is also taken in all (normal) services with minor modifications as may be required in each case, it should be possible to manage the whole economy. This means the economy should do much better with greater employment, production and earnings, without accumulating adverse economic conditions.

Benefits of interaction: As experienced managers will know, psychology, psychiatry, body language and interactive sessions go a long way in work situations. Physical interactions accentuate further scope for more intensive work relations. Such interactions have been the basis of many established relationships between enterprises. Then, deserving people get positions, and not just because of their seniority. So, the deserving are nurtured by colleagues or seniors. Interactive work situations are platforms for true learning.

Importance of rapport: In large corporates, regardless of the targets, there develops, as a natural process, specific ways, means and methods. What is more, there are exclusive techniques of developing rapport through individual efforts. For doing so, imaginative executives introduce techniques to kindle the right spirit among colleagues. All such matters cannot be dealt with through the internet. While new platforms are suitable for online transactions for reducing corrupt elements, personal interactions are essential for many other types of transactions.

Personal interactions are of great importance at almost all levels – record-keeping, collecting data, gathering related information for the work in hand through files and colleagues, middle-level decision-making, having discussions with the fileworker who initiated the work, deliberating with colleagues putting up the case — so that the leadership can arrive at a consensus based on differentiated emphasis on specific aspects of the case. This holds good also in inventions, innovations, new research findings and development processes. Discussions reveal that online working is not an adequate substitute and the sooner interactive work is restored, the better it will be for business deals.

Doles cannot go on: It is apparent now that life cannot be smooth without widening the scope for employment, social life and a decent income. The economy is now supported by the government but how far can this stop-gap arrangement continue? We are not doing enough of ‘off and on’ lockdowns as some countries do. We had a lockdown which fairly succeeded in minimizing the spread of Covid, but we now have to look at the damage done to the economy. How long can the government dole out relief packages and keep accumulating liabilities? The longer it goes on, the greater the damage, especially for the poor and the younger generation. Unless we expand the economic pie, how can we continue with the largesse? All expert bodies have warned of a shrinkage in GDP ranging from -7% to over -10%.

Try ‘Off-On’ model: The prime consideration is the economy and livelihood of the common man, and making the best use of primary (human) resources in this country of 1.3 billion. The other ingredients for prosperity follow only if we have well-educated and trained human beings. They deserve more funds and we cannot find money when business is in the doldrums. Once the system loses its erstwhile momentum built into systems and procedures, we lose so much more — for instance, the basics for gaining knowledge and training. Hence, a policy of ‘off and on’ merits serious adoption, lest we face more trouble. Unless we do so, we cannot return to normal growth. India has been on a development trajectory in a new way for the last 30 years, and we have fairly good national assets in terms of infrastructure, industrial and services sectors and many facilities for ushering in a competitive industrial structure.

Mantra of collaboration: We should make all-out efforts to ensure safe interactive working arrangements in all workplaces, whether essential services or non-essential services. Unless work is carried out as a collaborative endeavor, employees and professionals will become lop-sided personalities and the faculties for building a successful career will get dulled. This is applicable to seniors, equals and juniors. This is the Wikipedia interactive, collaborative and cooperative era; what one lacks, the others supplement and complement to make the work-in-hand the quickest.

While education or training is basic to discovering talent, what makes an individual a complete personality is what he picks up as life’s lessons. Nowadays very few can do research or work single-handedly. Covid vaccines and health care are a few examples. Major R&D and projects are undertaken as ‘joint projects’, bringing together diverse knowledge inputs from whichever source. Many pieces make a whole!

The past is a base for the present and the present, for the future. Data sets of each era may partly differ and partly be complementary. Our generation is sitting over inventions and innovations already made by past generations. Using them in right proportions and interactively, and for the common good, remains our responsibility

-- Dr KU Mada (The reviewer is an economist, author and former development banker)