[philipmathen]

According to me, this is a much larger malaise plaguing our country/culture- right from childhood to teenage to adulthood, nobody's trusted anywhere. We grow up being monitored in each phase, and this results in such things being required even in professional environments where we are supposed to behave with maturity. However, most of us still outgrow that attitude once we spend considerable time in a professional environment based on TRUST. Or so I feel. [/quote]

Hit the nail on the head. Being conditioned to view relative autonomy with suspicion is basically the crux of the problem.

[sunsivj]

Lot of timely threads which of course are in line with thoughts from many. Workload has almost doubled like many said and my CIO did present the productivity data which has improved quite a lot. I tell my peers that these days we only do login and forget to logout. Also the number of leaves taken by people have reduced in the past two months. Companies do benefit with less of Monday blues and early exit on Fridays which used to be seen with a few.

[yamaniac]

Been working from home since the Pandemic struck. Productivity has definitely increased. Because there is nothing else to do otherwise.
And while the chances of getting fired have increased manifolds, the employees are working hard to stay in good light. That is another reason no one talks about.

Working in the IT sector, People who otherwise were invisible have suddenly seemed to have found a voice and are trying hard to make themselves appear on a lot of tasks. Meetings, Follow up meetings and pinging you all throughout the day just to make sure that they get in the eyes of the management and to show how important that they are to the company has also increased.
While this isn't a bad thing it's getting very irritating.


Surprised that RE has taken this initiative. They are backward on technology, But something saves them money and is the future forward. Why not?

[veyron_head]

A permanent work from home is a very bad idea, atleast to me. The number of hours per day has gone up significantly with little or no increase in productivity. While the initial savings from real estate could seem lucrative i am sure companies will realize over time it is impractical to be a WFH company. Online meetings can never replace physical meetings.

[landcruiser123]

One should not underestimate the power of the human contact and communication. Sales, marketing, and many other functions of a business relies heavily on physical interaction for relationship building.

WFH + occasional in=person meetings should be the norm.

[W.A.G.7]

Originally Posted by rajushank84

I don't know if it is just my team or my company, but workload has doubled since work-from-home and management doesn't seem to care

I, completely agree here. Since the WFH started, the day begins at 9.00 AM and ends in the evening by 9 - 9.30 PM. I am not against WFH, but this is ok only once in a while. Since people know you are available throughout the day, Skype has become an interference in your work. So much, that at times you have to set your status as away/busy.

The pandemic brought major changes in how we think about work; but WFH may not be a viable solution always. I think given a choice, most of us will still prefer to go to office and keep WFH option for reserved days/emergencies.

[GeeTee TSI]

Akin to mandating work from office, mandating work from home is also in a way repressive. Working from home all the time need not equate to flexibility, freedom to choose days to work from home is the real 'flexibilty'

If an option is given to work from home (even if done so with certain guidelines which may be overbearing) the employee will make an informed choice between commuting to work, returning to familiar environs versus avoiding exposure whilst putting up with additional guidelines

[dragracer567]

A permanent WFH for many if not most employees is definitely not the solution. While it will work for freelances, it is imperative for us to collaborate with colleagues since it generally builds trust between them which will be missing if correspondence is only through emails or the occasional zoom call.

I would propose a system where we go to the office for a few days a week and WFH for the rest, so that way you get to collaborate with your colleagues while not having the grind of having to commute to work everyday. And exceptions could be made for single parents, mother's of new-borns etc. Offcourse, this means you won't have a 'personal working space' at work but I don't think that's a problem these days.

With regards to employee tracking, I absolutely detest our culture of treating teens and adults like kids! It's about time we start trusting our people to make the right choice and it's not like our companies and employees are anymore productive or loyal as compared to the west despite the babysitting. As Jereon mentioned, employee performance should be based on deliverables and job performance, not on timings or optics. What is considered 'human-nature' in the west in being considered 'rebellious' or 'taking advantage of freedom' in India Might as well incarcerate everyone, you won't have any crime and people will be 'model citizens' then.

PS sorry for the rant at the end.

[Johnnny]

Originally Posted by rajushank84

I don't know if it is just my team or my company, but workload has doubled since work-from-home and management doesn't seem to care. It is almost like they want to ensure control by extracting maximum amount of work possible.
(I am in software engineering, of course other industries may be different).

I completely agree with those points. Management doesn't care about the Mental stress breakdown and HR doesn't have the visibility of the working hours at all. I have working 2 months continuously(along with few others) without leave where i login from morning 10 am and log off by 12 or 1 am and handling 3 projects . All they care is Status!

[yd_gli]

Originally Posted by philipmathen

According to me, this is a much larger malaise plaguing our country/culture- right from childhood to teenage to adulthood, nobody's trusted anywhere. We grow up being monitored in each phase, and this results in such things being required even in professional environments where we are supposed to behave with maturity. However, most of us still outgrow that attitude once we spend considerable time in a professional environment based on TRUST. Or so I feel.

This! The managements of Indian organizations have been caught in a very difficult situation with the pandemic. The typical Indian businessman/manager who is suspicious and critical of everything his employees do is now having to re-think his way of working. Not all are capable of changing decades of thought process development overnight. I have relatives who have businesses and they can't figure out how to handle this situation. The archaic punch-in/punch-out, fixed lunch hours mentality is now out of the window and those who modernize will survive. The rest will bite the dust.
The IT/Services sector cribs at having more work but after having spent the last two decades yapping and socializing at chai tapris/happy hours its good to do work that justifies the 15% yearly increment. I work for an MNC and have been working long hours from home but this sure as hell beats whiling away half the workday for tea I don't need and the weekly HR/socializing events. My organization was good enough to let me take my hardware home and there has been no mention of getting back to the office.

[ThePatientMan]

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

I completely understand where you are coming from and I do agree with you to a very large extent. Forcing people to spend 10 hours a day on company premises even if people have no deliverables for the day is backward thinking. If I was in charge of running things, I would not have implemented very strict measure to track employees but that said, in an Indian environment (Im not saying this is true for all countries but I can vouch for it being true here), if you give employees an inch, some of them will take a mile. And therein lies the problem.

@neil.jericho - Completely agree with you on the inch and mile scenario. But I believe its just a question of few bad apples in the basket giving the whole basket a bad name. As a real-life example, I can quote the policy of a large media house where my wife works. Their sales team members are mandated to do 4 calls every day (physical client meeting at the client's office (pre-COVID days)- just that the term is referred to as a "call"). With few members playing Hooky and getting caught, now the sales guys have been forced by the management to install a geo-tagging software from Salesforce which tracks their physical movement down to every minute of their workday and they are required to check-in from the location (client's office) when going for client meetings. As jobs are difficult to come by these days, no one can object to the monitoring.

[Romins]

Here are some tips from long term WFH professionals:

Working from home tips from our experienced remote employees

I use Workrave to ensure I take regular breaks.

Finally, it is our health that we need to take care of. Whether it is in office or remote working, management cannot be held responsible for anything.

[xcentrk]

Originally Posted by rajushank84

I don't know if it is just my team or my company, but workload has doubled since work-from-home and management doesn't seem to care. It is almost like they want to ensure control by extracting maximum amount of work possible. I can see this becoming a way for the workforce to become even more commoditized. On the flip side, if this continues I may finally find the courage to leave the job and dive into freelancing. If I am going to be purely a commodity (which is already the case) sans any of the workplace and peergroup benefits, might as well do it in a setting where I can at least have some control over the type and amount of projects I commit to, and stop pretending to work towards a promotion.

(I am in software engineering, of course other industries may be different).

You are absolutely right! Every one of my ex-colleagues and friends who still employed at IT firms just cry whenever I talk to them!

One of my close friend who was my replacement in my last firm, he said not only the work time increased, but the work load is also increased. How is that possible?

So here it is how. Before this COVID situation, we used to draft man-days by calculating 8 hours as day as 1 man-day. So if a work takes 5 man-days, we will quote 10 man-days to client and finalize the deal at 8 man-days. This is a cool 3 man-days profit for organization(30% profit at minimum and goes up to 100% at times).

But now, what can take 5 days, will be carefully broken down into pieces that can now be done in 3 days, because 5x8 = 40 and 3x13=39. So again another cool 2 man-days profit while they pay very meager amount for office electricity consumption, and no additional benefits like free food/snacks/coffe, free ride etc! Since employee has nowhere to go during day-time(Companies POV), why not spend those extra hours for us while getting the same pay? To top it off, citing this pandemic situation, they siphoned off big chunk by saying no increments/hike.

So all reduced expenses + 2 additional man-days profit all if employees work from home. Who wouldn't want that? A psycho of a company would.

I am glad I quit full-time about a year ago and took freelancing. Although I have stress about finances then and now when the projects are less, but they can be temporary. But what I am seeing happening to my friends, I am sure lot of them are going into depression and already into it. I feel sorry for them.

And this is the time to evaluate our choices. If the company treats us like just another prisoner or treat us like human beings. If it is former, it is time to switch company.

[NiInJa]

I think time/activity tracking culture comes from Manufacturing side style of management, so the mentality is always going to be there for some time in India. Back in 2009 when I joined a mid-size Indian IT company, I realised that most senior management in IT had this manufacturing mentality as they had spent long time there. Do note that India before the IT revolution was mostly into manufacturing, so once the management from core IT was taken, companies were left with experienced men/women from Manufacturing/banking industry. As a result, policies were based on human resources being treated like machines or laborers doing a fixed set of work like working at an assembly line.
So, if you were to take a holiday on Friday and Monday, total 4 leaves would get deducted a-la manufacturing companies (Sat and Sun would be considered as leave). Nobody questioned the rationale then but it was abolished by 2011.
Laptops were not given to lowest level employees as they were considered 'inexperienced' in handling companies' asset (I have actually heard this with my own ears back in 2009 !). VPN was used then too so data security was never an issue. So I and my colleagues would risk ourselves coding till 1 AM in the morning in office (to align our hours with UK) with the office cafeteria closing at 8 PM and riding 15 km back home in the middle of the night with an empty stomach most of the times. We had to fill 'job-cards' then with specific pre-defined 'jobs' when our actual work involved so many ad-hoc calls/meetings with different people, research, coding, testing etc with no fixed methods. They finally did away with traditional job-card in 2012-13 and introduced a new method where only your project hours would be logged and you were not required to select any specific 'jobs'.

So in a way, we Indians have come a long way in accepting WFH as a long term solution in certain cases.

Going off topic, but I've been working from home for the last 2.5 years out of which first 1.5 years was for UAE, Oman, Bahrain based clients. My total WFH experience is almost 4 years and have learnt quite a few things on time management. I did not have kids then but as some people mentioned, management and client would take advantage of this WFH setup and would expect me to be available for calls at their convenience. Must note that most of the management from ME client side was of Indian origin and they were the biggest pain, not a problem with US/UK counterparts though. The solution for this is that one should be firm and assertive about his working hours and making a point on not replying to any mails or even Whatsapp chats during off hours. Once, I had to tersely reply to a client that we will have all official chat on lync/skype or mails but no whatsapp. At some point everyone around you will adapt to it, doesn't matter if they hate it. The first thing I would do when on-boarding a new project was discussing working hours with my manager. So far it has worked well. Now that I have a 2 year old toddler around, working hours have become extremely flexible, but the understanding between me and my boss is that it really doesn't matter as long as I get the work done within the set time-frame which we both decide and communicate clearly. Having said that, its always good to meet people physically once in a while so we make a point to work from shared office space for one day in a month. There are cases of employees goofing off and taking advantage of WFH, but a good manager will be able to find and correct such nut cases quickly, even without any activity tracking software, I've had first hand experience of this when working in the 'Big Four'. Again, 'Visibility' is an issue in big IT companies, especially for young people and having worked in one of such big companies for a short time, I can only say that it all boils down to how your stars are aligned, if you get a good project with some 'real' work which will enhance your resume, then you can make a mark else you'll see yourself doing absolutely nothing meaningful for months and months together. In such cases, how to stay under management's radar is something we can discuss in another thread

[CarJunki]

Tracking of activity on computers for productivity monitoring is not new. My first encounter was in year 2003. Yes a full 17 years ago, there was at least one IT company which tracked using keyloggers.

Interesting evolution is happening in al-cheapo office politics scene. This is much more interesting to watch.