The lockdowns following coronavirus outbreak around the world have activated business continuity plans in organizations around the world. After the initial scramble to ensure employees have a ‘home office’ setup, network and connectivity to connect from their residences, managers began embracing the ‘new normal.‘ Phrases like surreal, once-in-a-lifetime and zoom sessions became clichéd when used to describe everything about the unfolding events.
Executives across a cross-section of enterprises began extolling how their businesses continued to operate while employees worked from home during lockdowns. Many leaders, especially in the tech sector were publicly contemplating how this trend would continue in a post-pandemic era.
Technology services giant TCS that employs 450,000 people globally made a bold announcement that planned to enable 75% of its employees to permanently work from home by 2025. (link). Jennifer Christie, the Vice President of HR for the social media giant, Twitter blogged (link):
We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere. The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return.
The CEO of American Express, that employs more than 64,000 worldwide indicated they were not in a rush to have employees return back to offices (link) “We still don’t know exactly when we will start coming back, but we expect it will take several months in most locations. The key here is that returning to the office will not happen all at once.”
Work from home, not the new normal for some?
We are few months into lockdowns and many white-collar workers continue to thrive in the ‘new normal.’ Many leaders are accepting the inevitable through the end of 2020 but chinks are already appearing as large segments of corporate world continue to Work From Home.
Even tech-companies where employees are familiar with remote collaboration, outsourcing and engaging with colleagues across geographies seem to be back-paddling when it comes to large scale telecommuting. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, is among first hi-tech leaders to voice concerns about employees working from home en masse over extended periods.
In a recent interview with New York Times (link), Mr. Nadella said that while raw productivity stats for many of Microsoft’s workers have gone up, he isn’t ready to “overcelebrate,” and he added
More meetings start and end on time, but “what I miss is when you walk into a physical meeting, you are talking to the person that is next to you, you’re able to connect with them for the two minutes before and after.” That’s tough to replicate virtually, as are other soft skills crucial to managing and mentoring.
Mr. Nadella also cautioned about the long term-risks of switching from offices to an all-remote setup would be “replacing one dogma with another dogma” that could lead to employee burnout. The key questions Mr. Nadella raised in the interview are issues Human Resources managers and CxOs across industry segments are going to ponder over
- What does burnout look like? Not all employees thrive in remote-work settings. Some are extroverted and need daily engagement with colleagues and peers. Not having such engagement could lead to burnout that managers need to watch for
- What does mental health look like? Employees who commute to offices daily have a support system and peer-group they informally lean-on during their work day. Managers and colleagues can also sense when an otherwise normal colleague begins exhibiting signs of stress, and can suggest corrective actions including counseling. It is harder to pick-up cues or body-language when the entire team is working remotely.
- What does that connectivity and the community building look like? In the interview, Nadella mused “One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. What’s the measure for that?”
Scaling for long-term telecommuting
While employees come to grips with the current mode of working from home, executives are also reflecting on the implication of managing social capital, social engagement among employees who work remotely. We are likely to see creative solutions to such issues as large segments of white-collar workers continue to work remotely, at least through the rest of 2020.
Guest post by Mohan K. The author is a technology executive and Enterprise Architect. He regularly contributes to myDigitalStartup.org and other forums
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