WFH - Prevention is better than cure
Banking Frontiers organized an online panel discussion on work from home concept and its advantages and pitfalls with Atul Joshi, Vice President – HR & Admin at Mahindra Finance and Sunil Wariar, CHRO at Future Generali General Insurance, discussing the WFH initiatives in their institutions, and the challenges and opportunities. Edited excerpts:
Manoj Ag raw al: What kind of psychological problems are employees likely to face if WFH continues for extended periods?
Atul Joshi: This whole covid situation has created an unprecedented challenge. Earlier, WFH was considered as a holiday and an enjoyment activity. But the current situation has broken this myth and people have realized that work-life balance has become work-life integration. A recent study indicates that more than 50% of the people are finding an increase in productivity resulting from extension of the work hours. People are saving time travelling to work and are utilizing that time for doing office work. When you are in the office, there is a physiological limit you have, but not at home. So, most professionals end up doing more work at home. Employees must manage home affairs and elongated working hours. A lot of discipline is needed by the individual to be effective in the current scenario.
Sunil Wariar: Earlier, WFH was considered as being on leave; if someone said I want to work from home, then it was looked at with an element of suspicion. We at Future Generali adopted WFH from 14 March 2020, one week prior to the lockdown announced by the government. Our claims, operations and back office teams faced a new challenge. Now, we have adjusted with it very well, though certain elements in distribution and sales need to be fixed. As a servicespecialized organization, there is lot of adaptation happening on our side.
Will WFH policy be adopted by the industry, given that the home
environment is different for different employees?
Atul Joshi: The WFH productivity improvement is essentially happening in the mid-level or higher management; at the bottom of the pyramid, they cannot WFH, they have no choice. If mangers WFH and create work-life balance, then it helps in creating better productivity. It also saves infrastructure and real estate costs, particularly in metro cities. Organizations are trying with few days WFH and few days of work from office for certain categories of people.
Mahindra Finance has adopted WFH extremely well, either by providing the employee a desktop at home or allowing people to use their own devices. Also, all the myths related to security issues were broken, because there is no option.
Once there was realization that this is a new normal, the organization took every possible step to make the IT infrastructure available for the employees to WFH. Gradually technology problems got solved and organizational problems started. People are improving their communication skills because when you have a 1-hour meeting in a virtual form, you need to be extremely crisp in your communication. Earlier, the same meetings used to consume more time. When you have to focus on 1-hour online video meeting, you need a high level of focus and attention. What we are calling a new normal is actually not a new normal; people are doing things virtually that they were doing in-person and people are working remotely. Working remotely requires a work environment where you can learn to use the collaboration tools. Today, with things getting exchanged through mails, the future will be working in a collaborative way using collaboration tools on your devices.
Sunil Wariar: Future Generali did a survey after 3 weeks of WFH. Only 40% of our employees have laptops and most of the salespeople don’t have. The back-office staff don’t need laptops as they have desktop. So, we leased around 400 l aptops. Then, we were facing the problem of broadband internet connection, but most of the things got fixed within 3 weeks. The survey found out that close to 25% of our employees want to come back and work from office, while other employees felt that WFH was great concept as they were enjoying food, spending time with family members and pursuing their favourite hobbies, etc.
Reasons shared for coming back to office include not having a place to keep the desktop and not having an independent place to work at home. In some cases, our operations team guided employees to work on night shifts, as the broadband speed was better during night time. Our employees went out of the way to adjust to the new situation.
Nearly 50-60 of our offices are operating in orange and green zones and we have 25% attendance in our offices. Police have behaved differently in different suburbs of Mumbai. We have also introduced lot of engagement programs like yoga and antakshari for our employees to keep them connected.
How do you see t he f ut ur e of collaboration tools in your organization?
Atul Joshi: Indian managers were used to working in a scenario where most of the team members were around you. Working virtually requires managers to trust on the team members and there is a need for transparency. Many people may not have the good atmosphere to work from home or even for a proper conference call there may be noise in the background. Working f rom home does not mean you are available 24x7 and mangers must respect the time boundaries. It is important that managers show some sensitivity towards people. There are team meetings and review meetings for which employees have to block their calendars. People are effectively using the calendar during the day to ensure that they are productive.
Sunil Wariar: The biggest challenge for us is getting our people to adjust with the new skills. My sales team had confidence that physical meetings can do wonders so if they can’t achieve targets during the month, they can achieve in month-end by fixing meetings with critical people. But now it is necessary for them to put their propositions across on telephonic interaction and collaboration tools.
There a r e multi pl e pl a t f o r ms available and we are using Microsoft platforms extensively for collaboration and for training our agents. The big challenge is that after 4-5 hectic sessions in a day, the level of energy gets very low and it becomes very difficult to focus. Collaboration will be important, but how you put the collaboration into action is especially important. As we go along, you need these skills to have a better outcome.
Any changes in the use of calendar tools after WFH?
Atul Joshi: The calendar tool is becoming amazingly effective in checking who is available and who is not, as you can see somebody’s availability in the calendar tool. People are innovatively using the calendar tool.
Sunil Wariar: The supervisor and team leaders mainly do t he calendarization. It has become important as there is a formal protocol and meetings are possible because of the calendarization and collaboration tools, which was not done in earlier days. Typically, 10-12 members meeting via conference call is highly effective in terms of participation and commitment. How is HR helping in creating stronger bonding among the employees? How is HR helping in developing stronger leaderships in the current remote working scenario?
Atul Joshi: Earlier, you used to meet the spouse of your colleagues and their kids once in a while, but now due to WFH people are introducing each other’s spouses and family members virtually - that creates a bonding and I feel this is very important. Something that would have taken 6 months is now happening very quickly. If you look at the whole concept of leadership development, all of us used different ways. We have experienced leadership development in a quite different way of education, experience and exposure. Earlier the international university programs were limited to a few people, because it involves cost of travel and stay, but now with virtual learning, more people are getting the benefits of doing an international degree course. Also, now there are lot of courses available and people have flexibility to do different courses because of WFH and the technology platforms that are supporting it. This is helping people to focus on leadership development education by themselves.
There are positives and some challenges to virtual training. First, the responsibility lies on the individual for development, which is a big shift. Now the organization provides platforms and options and the individuals must take the responsibility of what they need to learn.
SunilW ari ar: We need to rediscover leadership in a new context. The conventional competencies and measurements that are associated with success need to be revisited. The observation and real time scenario were particularly important in a leadership development center setting. These things will have to be recalibrated and we will have to come up with newer mechanisms. Any type of development will force individuals to take new types of responsibility. Earlier, there were options in training, but now we are in a situation where there is no option. Today, we are dealing with uncertainty and it will take time to deal with it, but the principle will remain the same and a lot of individual responsibility is called for.