[speedem0n]

Received on WhatsApp, Royal Enfield seems to have permanently shifted to Work From Home.

[Aditya]

Royal Enfield proposes permanent Work From Home - Post moved to a new thread.

[Nikhildrao]

The pandemic has bought about a thought revolution for sure. Every company understands the importance of decentralisation and how unnecessary many jobs are in terms of granting office space. Interesting results with impending uncertainty is what the future holds

[Jeroen]

Big brother is watching you, pretty pathetic and it shows extremely weak leadership if you ask me:



It really shows that management has not made the transition from an office environment to working from home at all. They just want to get rid of the cost of their real estate, whilst maintaining the same minute control over their employees. Such a shame!

Jeroen

[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).

[ashikthomson]

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).

Exactly! Even I'm working like 2x now. Once I login in the morning, there would be more than enough workload always getting added which means most of the days I would be having my lunch in front of my laptop. And the working hours also get extended and before I even know it it would have already touched an additional 1-2 hours,that too without enough breaks. The cons of less peer interaction is coming up, where in previously most of the issues would have got resolved walking down to the other cabin, but now multiple emails have to be run like shuttle.

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Big brother is watching you, pretty pathetic and it shows extremely weak leadership if you ask me:

Attachment 2014150

It really shows that management has not made the transition from an office environment to working from home at all. They just want to get rid of the cost of their real estate, whilst maintaining the same minute control over their employees. Such a shame!

Jeroen

Really abhorrent policy. Should a employee just sit in front of his computer? Should be instead based on looking at work done against goals. Some IT companies also do this at office premises. (Atleast they can walk around within offices) They will do the same for WFH. I have said before that management needs to find better ways of defining goals or work plan.

[srini1785]

If i understand it right , this circular is for all regional sales offices and apparel section staff who sell merchandise. The showroom staff are not affected by this circular since they are independent dealerships. Sales guys , up to a level , have to spend max , sometimes all , time in field to meet customers. In case of RE the customers are its dealerships.

Its norm for most companies to stipulate a minimum number of visits per day. So the circular which says that you need to take the Fixed journey cycle (FJC's) also defines your daily call routines. IMO, its nothing new or alarming. Although "monitoring" is a scary word, take my word for it, there are always ways in which management can find out what you are up to even without "monitoring". All it takes is a phone call based on your call reports.

RE is doing what everyone is doing: trying a new model of sales administration in relation to the present lean market situation and its quite a welcome change. Earlier, a RM , if he / she comes to office , would get bogged down with admin details. Now he / she gets more time on the field.

[neil.jericho]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Big brother is watching you, pretty pathetic and it shows extremely weak leadership if you ask me:

Attachment 2014150

It really shows that management has not made the transition from an office environment to working from home at all. They just want to get rid of the cost of their real estate, whilst maintaining the same minute control over their employees. Such a shame!

Jeroen

That does seem like harsh criticism, to be honest. Having worked in large IT companies, I have seen first hand the software that has been deployed to track actual computer usage of employees while they are in office. That truly is Big Brother at its finest (worst?) but if you look at it from the other lens, it is meant to identify in-built down time and inefficiencies in the system (oh, there are a lot of those, I can promise you), that can be optimized.

From what I can gather in this case with Royal Enfield, the steps that they have proposed is in line with the how most companies are adapting to the Covid world - reducing costs and finding more efficient and more importantly, safer ways of working for it's employees.

I would be more concerned with a company's leadership if, given a similar set of roles, it refused to change based on the current scenario and continued with it's old ways.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

That does seem like harsh criticism, to be honest.

Eye of the beholder, but I can not think of any modern, self respecting, successful company, big or small, that believes it needs to physically track whereabouts of employees attendance.

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

Having worked in large IT companies, I have seen first hand the software that has been deployed to track actual computer usage of employees while they are in office. That truly is Big Brother at its finest (worst?) but if you look at it from the other lens, it is meant to identify in-built down time and inefficiencies in the system (oh, there are a lot of those, I can promise you), that can be optimized.

There is lots you need to track when you develop code. Attendance is not necessarily one of them. They are basically still at the level where they believe they need to track people clocking in and out.

I used to run Software Development projects. Typical project size 1000-2000 man-years. Which would mean 6-12 months for sizeable teams of thousands of people. I have never ever worried about people’s attendance.

If attendance is an issue you are likely to have a cultural problem as a bare minimum, which is always a managerial problem. Forcing people to sit at a desk, sit behind a computer does nothing for their output, their creativity, their enthusiasm, their loyalty, their competence etc.

Management needs to create an environment where people want to work. Show me a company that tracks attendance and I will show you a company with very dated management philosophy. That does not mean the company could be successful in its own right. It means it could be way more successful!

Jeroen

[neil.jericho]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Eye of the beholder, but I can not think of any modern, self respecting, successful company, big or small, that believes it needs to physically track whereabouts of employees attendance.

Unfortunately, tracking employees activity on their computers and physical movement is prevalent these days for large companies in India. Ive seen the pilot program of employee activity tracking for a dedicated customer account, as far back as 2011 - 12, if my memory serves me correctly. This was subsequently rolled out across the organization across all accounts.

Yes, it may be an antiqued management policy but it is the norm and not the exception.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

There is lots you need to track when you develop code. Attendance is not necessarily one of them. They are basically still at the level where they believe they need to track people clocking in and out.

I used to run Software Development projects. Typical project size 1000-2000 man-years. Which would mean 6-12 months for sizeable teams of thousands of people. I have never ever worried about people’s attendance.

If attendance is an issue you are likely to have a cultural problem as a bare minimum, which is always a managerial problem. Forcing people to sit at a desk, sit behind a computer does nothing for their output, their creativity, their enthusiasm, their loyalty, their competence etc.

Management needs to create an environment where people want to work. Show me a company that tracks attendance and I will show you a company with very dated management philosophy. That does not mean the company could be successful in its own right. It means it could be way more successful!

Jeroen

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.

So there needs to be some measure of accountability and tracking in place to ensure that freedoms given are not misused.

On the topic of this particular company, they are moving to a more flexible and efficient model while having some (we dont know what as of this stage) mechanisms in place to ensure productivity. It might work, it might not. It might need tweaking or it may work right out of the box. I think srini1785 has articulated the potential benefits well in the preceding post.

To change a company's culture is not easy (Im sure you have seen far more examples of attempts of this than me) but I will give them a thumbs up for being willing to adapt in these times while keeping their employee's safety in mind.

[aghate]

I understand the sentiment of being watched and micro managed is not welcome, nor am I advocating about it. I can though speak about these 'monitoring' softwares as I have experienced about it. It has been rightly pointed out that working honestly and taking accountability comes from the individual but because of few individuals organizations have to take this step. Everyone else suffers, I say 'suffer' because it becomes a tendency to see everyone's work with the same generalized view.

This software was deployed a couple of years ago where I work and was supposed 'key' to improve performance. All it did was monitor the active 'screen on' time. That is which window is the person active on, what websites were visited, etc. Now imagine the situation where one has two screens to work on, you play videos on one screen and have the other work window active. Technically, the software thinks you are working long time whereas you aren't. People focused on ways to counter this policing than do the work.

Reason 1:
No one likes to work with someone constantly looking at their screen behind their backs. Although we had access to all news and social media websites, the software could still see if you accessed it and so did your Managers. Subconsciously, there may be a profile developed against/for you.

Reason 2:
If an individual completed a task in 4 hours and was free for the rest of the day, that person would be deemed as 'non-productive' against being 'efficient' (this actually happened). Two sides of the same coin.

Reason 3:
A said individual/team only has 5-6 hours of average screen on time against the total of 9 hours/day. There are a very few people who would be glued to their laptop/PC and working constantly for whatever stipulated hours they are supposed to work in a day or even more. Take me for example, I need to show about 8 hours work every day, is that possible every day? No. Obviously, mind wandering happens now and then, one cannot help. That does not make an individual less skilled by any means.

In my opinion, a good leadership should be able to identify non-performing individuals without the help of any such policing software. There was a huge debate (argument) regarding this when this software reached the West with regards to how brilliant it was and its successful deployment in Indian offices. People who were against it a lot were made redundant no matter how good they were. Leadership questioned all employees with their time management even though they were hitting the metrics just for the sake of 'you can still improve'. There is a limit which needed to be defined. This software was later removed after much discussion and management not really getting any benefit from it and having to pay for it's license.

In general, the overall work culture in India needs a huge improvement and then organizations would not need to implement such practices. I say this from both an employee and an employer perspective.

[neofromcapone]

Employee Productivity is easy to derive with the use of technology, and an employer is within his rights to expect a certain threshold of productivity.
Trust me, the workspace will get more smoother and easier once everyone settles in.
This is like learning to sign with your non-dominant hand, will take a while, dedication and practice and you will be able to sign, like you would with your dominant hand.

What really struck me - RE is not expecting sales to happen like they used to pre-COVID19.
And I feel, they have gone on a cost cutting mode, and valued its human capital, and seems like retaining most of them. Which is a far superior plan, then laying off people.

[philipmathen]

Does seem like RE is open to new ideas and it is smart that they try to cut exorbitant overheads quickly. With the pandemic, cash is king, and the more bikes they can sell while saving on rents and utilities, well,that only bodes well for them.

I work in a bank and a similar conversation has started. It is a paradigm shift. Never in a million years would the Indian banking industry have even considered it an option. But now people are waking up to the possibility of huge cost savings. Commercial spaces are huge sinkholes that can only pay for themselves if you are turning in healthy profits. No industry is going to be able to do that for the next couple of years.

About employee tracking, sadly, as mentioned earlier in the thread, the tendency of a few to slack off and try and manipulate things like attendance and actual working hours, coupled with our mindset of still being in school, where a large number of workforce cannot be trusted to drive themselves to do their routine tasks unless monitored, has forced the hands of most organisations. Add to that the mentality of most HR/Management to obsess over minute stuff like who’s visiting what site, are they doing office related tasks the 10 hours they are in their seats etc.

It’s a debate with only one winner, the one who pays your salary. With our surfeit of people vying for the same job, we are disposable.

I’ve recently been introduced to the policy of Bring Your Own Device, where the organisation claims that confidential information stored in your email app on your phone can be hacked in case of a cyber attack or theft/loss of the phone. Purportedly under this premise, employees have to give consent to install a new device management app that would allow IT support access to your device to remotely to wipe/view it, enforce password policies, track through gps, basically mirror your phone. Interestingly and unsurprisingly, no mention of what would happen if said hacking happened through a compromised IT support employee/login.
Needless to say, I have immediately dismissed it and said I would happily do so on a device of their choosing, that they paid for. Tracking your employees activities on their office desktop/laptop is pretty demeaning, asking for administrator level access to their personal devices is another level of over-reach. I am sure someone in HR and IT security with way too much time on their hands got together with a happy software vendor to hatch this new horror.

[vivek_lm]

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

if you give employees an inch, some of them will take a mile. And therein lies the problem.

Originally Posted by aghate

because of few individuals organizations have to take this step. Everyone else suffers

Originally Posted by philipmathen

About employee tracking, sadly, as mentioned earlier in the thread, the tendency of a few to slack off and try and manipulate things like attendance and actual working hours

I guess this is precisely what DBHPian Jeroen referred to as a 'cultural problem':

Originally Posted by Jeroen

If attendance is an issue you are likely to have a cultural problem as a bare minimum, which is always a managerial problem.

And I completely agree with him on this. If you have such employees- quite a few of them- then it probably boils down to two things:

1. How did those employees get into the company in the first place? Did the interview not evaluate behavioural aspects for attitude problems (specifically integrity)? Alright, it's impossible to identify everything in interviews, but how did they manage to complete their probation (I believe most companies have this concept) successfully and become permanent employees?
2. If they were good initially and started slacking over the course of their careers, what caused this? Most probably something within the organization itself that pushed them into frustration or a state of "I don't care". If not toxic work culture, what else?

In any case, such people can still be made to mend their ways or weeded out- you don't need to lower the morale of the entire project/organization to force a few handful of such slackers to dedicatedly do their work, isn't it?

Originally Posted by philipmathen

coupled with our mindset of still being in school, where a large number of workforce cannot be trusted to drive themselves to do their routine tasks unless monitored, has forced the hands of most organisations.

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.