[m8002?]

Originally Posted by am1m

This is something I really can't understand, how does it benefit any IT company to have their 'critical human resources' spend hours in traffic in cities like Bangalore?

Thats because, maybe the company thinks that person's productivity in lower office hours beats his productivity at home. I have come across people who are "working" but are offline on Teams and not attend phone either. Take the case where this offline guy's input is needed for my task's progress and we are in wait mode. This will not happen when everyone is in office where I can just walk over and talk to him.

Many times these rules are brought in because a "significant minority" of people misuse the WFH. Like your BB guy. We have one day a week ( Wed ) WFO and guess what, people will come up with some excuse on that day.
1. They are always "not well" on Wed
2. They will have a health check-up for parents only Wed.
3. They need to go to the bank/school/whatever only on that day.
4. House help did not come and many more.

Again, its not like all of them do. But some do. And companies cannot have one policy for sincere folks and another for slackers. So they can take 1 of the two options:
1. Fire all the folks who misuse and hire guys who they feel will work sincerely ( no guarantee the new guy will be sincere and add the learning curve )
2. Ask everyone to come to office.

What will you do if you are the manager?

[am1m]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Take the case where this offline guy's input is needed for my task's progress and we are in wait mode.

What will you do if you are the manager?

Design better processes that don't involve everyone "waiting for one person's input". But yes, that can happen, in which case, if that "significant" person is always offline, have a chat with them and find out why and what can be done to change that. In our teams at work, we have core hours where the whole team is expected to be online. These hours are decided within the team before. There are several such strategies that can be employed here.

If it's really only a minority of team members who abuse remote work, then try sorting that out with a discussion. If that doesn't work, then apply the same company regulations that would be applied if a person was continuously missing from office in the regular work setup.

Design policies that work for the majority and assume trust to start with. Deal with the one-off, non-compliant cases separately and as required instead of imposing blanket bans on the majority who are compliant- isn't that what good management is supposed to do?

In an office setup, if out of a team of 20, 2 people always show up for meetings late post-lunch, do you try and correct that with those 2 separately, or do you ask all 20 team members to take a shorter lunch break?

[Vishal.R]

Originally Posted by m8002?

I have come across people who are "working" but are offline on Teams and not attend phone either.

Originally Posted by m8002?

What will you do if you are the manager?

1. Set proper expectations to whole team and communicate in written as well as orally to team that everyone MUST be available online within office hours.

2.In the team where I am working, management has already set processes as below,

• Everyone need to send message in Team's common group chat, when becomes online in morning and when log-off for the day.
  
• In case someone need to be offline for genuine reasons (including lunch breaks), need to to send a message in common chat that he / she is offline for some time.

Adherence to this process is considered as deliverable, so if someone still doesn't follow the practice, Manager / leads would warn that one - on - one and such things will be part of his / her appraisal / performance review as well.

[padmrajravi]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Thats because, maybe the company thinks that person's productivity in lower office hours beats his productivity at home. I have come across people who are "working" but are offline on Teams and not attend phone either. Take the case where this offline guy's input is needed for my task's progress and we are in wait mode. This will not happen when everyone is in office where I can just walk over and talk to him.

Again, its not like all of them do. But some do. And companies cannot have one policy for sincere folks and another for slackers. So they can take 1 of the two options:
1. Fire all the folks who misuse and hire guys who they feel will work sincerely ( no guarantee the new guy will be sincere and add the learning curve )
2. Ask everyone to come to office.

What will you do if you are the manager?

Can't we use their appraisal/evaluation rating to make that decision? If the employee appraisal ratings are proper, you can mandate people below a threshold rating to work from the office. Prompt communication is usually a big part of appraisal evaluation criteria. If the rating process is accurate, people who exhibit such behavior will naturally end up with lowest rating. Working from home need not be a right, it can be an incentive or benefit that only high performers/ dependeable employees enjoy.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by am1m

Design better processes that don't involve everyone "waiting for one person's input". But yes, that can happen, in which case, if that "significant" person is always offline, have a chat with them and find out why and what can be done to change that. In our teams at work, we have core hours where the whole team is expected to be online. These hours are decided within the team before. There are several such strategies that can be employed here.

If it's really only a minority of team members who abuse remote work, then try sorting that out with a discussion. If that doesn't work, then apply the same company regulations that would be applied if a person was continuously missing from office in the regular work setup.

Design policies that work for the majority and assume trust to start with. Deal with the one-off, non-compliant cases separately and as required instead of imposing blanket bans on the majority who are compliant- isn't that what good management is supposed to do?

In an office setup, if out of a team of 20, 2 people always show up for meetings late post-lunch, do you try and correct that with those 2 separately, or do you ask all 20 team members to take a shorter lunch break?

That was an example of things that keep happening once in a while with different people. Its not like there is this person X who is always offline or who is always late. The observation is that, in general with WFH, people are not always available at the desk during work hours like they are in office

And these kind of small things start adding up when you have a 1000 member workforce.

Originally Posted by Vishal.R

1. Set proper expectations to whole team and communicate in written as well as orally to team that everyone MUST be available online within office hours.

2.In the team where I am working, management has already set processes as below,

• Everyone need to send message in Team's common group chat, when becomes online in morning and when log-off for the day.
  
• In case someone need to be offline for genuine reasons (including lunch breaks), need to to send a message in common chat that he / she is offline for some time.

Adherence to this process is considered as deliverable, so if someone still doesn't follow the practice, Manager / leads would warn that one - on - one and such things will be part of his / her appraisal / performance review as well.

Clear communication from top management and HR on what is expected and the consequences would help.

Originally Posted by padmrajravi

Can't we use their appraisal/evaluation rating to make that decision? If the employee appraisal ratings are proper, you can mandate people below a threshold rating to work from the office. Prompt communication is usually a big part of appraisal evaluation criteria. If the rating process is accurate, people who exhibit such behavior will naturally end up with lowest rating. Working from home need not be a right, it can be an incentive or benefit that only high performers/ dependeable employees enjoy.

Isnt that like making the appraisal public?

[am1m]

Originally Posted by m8002?

The observation is that, in general with WFH, people are not always available at the desk during work hours like they are in office

Is that a perception, or fact? I mean I was never at my desk all the time, even when I was working from an office. As a matter of fact, I can say for sure that I spend a lot less time over lunch when working from home, than I do/did while working from an office- where it was inevitably lunch with colleagues and we'd end up going somewhere out. And even during the rest of the workday, I could be at another section of the office, perhaps out for a walk, etc. etc. Not to mention the 2+ hours a day I'd be commuting and certainly unavailable!

So overall, I really think that may be perception.

Some general observations/musings (not directed at any particular post):

* Is that the best use of a manager's time? Tracking how long or why someone is away from their desks? Either in a remote work or work from office setup.
* Are the majority of employees really slacking off because of remote work? Has productivity reduced in such setups? Would be good to have data.
* How much of this is really a reluctance to change mindset? From "I need to monitor my team" to "I need to find a way to manage this work model"?

[roy_libran]

Originally Posted by am1m

Is that a perception, or fact?

We have been 'forced' to go to office twice a week, which entails a 150 km round trip commute for me. Anyway, to beat mad Delhi traffic I reach by 8.30 and leave by 2.30-3.00 pm. I don't have a team, reporting line or stakeholder in India, but I need to clock in. So, I spend 4-5 hours driving, then 2+ hours in the gym, and then an hour or so catching up with the few folks I know over coffee, and finally clearing out my inbox whilst at the workplace. All this isn't bad.

The downside for someone like me is that I start my actual work once I am back home and then have to work on till late to finish up all my meetings - mostly with CXO and CXO-1 level stakeholders.
So those 2 days a week become a 6.30 am to 11.30 pm affair for me usually.

The guy who made this sweeping decision for India has zero skin in the game in most things, but wants to make his presence felt.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by roy_libran

Anyway, to beat mad Delhi traffic I reach by 8.30 and leave by 2.30-3.00 pm.

Depressingly familiar. Pre-covid when we all worked from the office, our office was in a slice of traffic hell that even has it's own separate dedicated traffic rant thread on this forum (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/stree...rld-great.html (11 Reasons why RMZ Ecoworld is great))

Most people would have to catch their office cabs at 7:00am and the cabs would leave office by 3:30 for them to have any chance of escaping just the internal road traffic jam (forget the rest of the ORR). Few of us like me used to commute using our own vehicles and we'd play cricket in the deserted corridors... So much for in-office collaboration!

Originally Posted by roy_libran

The guy who made this sweeping decision for India has zero skin in the game in most things...

Again depressingly familiar. Among the top execs who made this 'enlightened' decision to actually leave a lower cost office space that had good public transport connectivity to pay more and move to a fancier office in this traffic-plagued area- one was anyway going back to the US in a matter of months, and the other had a home in the residential project attached to the IT park so he could walk to work! So traffic didn't matter to them, just to the other 700-odd employees!

Originally Posted by m8002?

some ad-hoc discussions at that time

In a remote setup, ping the person on messenger and ask them to ping you as soon as they get back. If this is something that needs to be cleared everyday, schedule recurring time where everyone is present. Options are there, the method is different, that's all.

Originally Posted by m8002?

You are talking of the two extremes while the reality is somewhere in between.

Fair enough. So all I'm saying is that with this in-between reality, a remote model can certainly work efficiently for IT jobs.

It's not like we're describing some non-existent, path-breaking work model. Several IT companies in the US have been doing this for years. For the exact same job roles. My last 3 bosses based in the US have visited their nearest office perhaps once or twice a year. 2 of them have been industry veterans and one of those was a 20-year career employee with that org. I've worked at 2 IT orgs that didn't even have enough physical office space to accommodate all employees in that city.

Originally Posted by m8002?

And this is something that has come out in multiple discussions with friends and ex-colleagues in different organizations.

Well, similarly I've found several colleagues and friends who think the remote work model works quite well and with equal productivity.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by am1m

Is that a perception, or fact? I mean I was never at my desk all the time, even when I was working from an office. As a matter of fact, I can say for sure that I spend a lot less time over lunch when working from home, than I do/did while working from an office- where it was inevitably lunch with colleagues and we'd end up going somewhere out. And even during the rest of the workday, I could be at another section of the office, perhaps out for a walk, etc. etc. Not to mention the 2+ hours a day I'd be commuting and certainly unavailable!

You are talking of the two extremes while the reality is somewhere in between.

No one expects you to be at the desk the whole working time...but a very good probability that you and your colleagues will be at desk together "most" of the time. Your own examples of going for lunch/walk with colleagues or travelling, your colleagues are not going to come to you for some ad-hoc discussions at that time since they are also doing the same activity at that time.

Originally Posted by am1m

Some general observations/musings (not directed at any particular post):

* Is that the best use of a manager's time? Tracking how long or why someone is away from their desks? Either in a remote work or work from office setup.
* Are the majority of employees really slacking off because of remote work? Has productivity reduced in such setups? Would be good to have data.
* How much of this is really a reluctance to change mindset? From "I need to monitor my team" to "I need to find a way to manage this work model"?

You are getting my point wrong. My argument is also that the manager should not be tracking how long someone is away from desk. There were managers who were tracking that in office and will track it in WFH mode as well.
It has just become more difficult to have an ad-hoc discussion/meeting with
people (1 or many) and resolve something. And this is very critical for new teams. Again to reiterate, I am not telling it never happens now and always happens in office.

My org had 1 day a week WFH long before Covid ( from 2017 )and I can say there is a difference in the way people are available during WFH now vs then. And this is something that has come out in multiple discussions with friends and ex-colleagues in different organizations.

[AltoLXI]

Originally Posted by Nalin1

Mandating people to be in office only to save real estate, catering, housekeeping, transport etc is like hoping for people to fall sick because hospitals need to run, crimes more often as cops need work, cars ram into each other as body shops need business.

Exactly. More of a kid and Charlie Chaplin relationship?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjpL9EJKlwQ

Apart from meeting the KPIs in work and paying taxes, employees also have responsibility to keep the economy floating . So what if AI renders all the software jobs redundant? The CEO in question will blame AI for the affecting business?

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Nalin1

Mandating people to be in office only to save real estate, catering, housekeeping, transport etc is like hoping for people to fall sick because hospitals need to run, crimes more often as cops need work, cars ram into each other as body shops need business.

I'm a wee bit confused. How is mandating people to be in office a saving on real estate, transport, catering? May be I'm missing something.

Originally Posted by roy_libran

We have been 'forced' to go to office twice a week, which entails a 150 km round trip commute for me. Anyway, to beat mad Delhi traffic I reach by 8.30 and leave by 2.30-3.00 pm. .

As a long time resident of Delhi NCR I am struggling to work out which IT work location in Delhi NCR is 75 Kms one way from Gaziabad? Cyber City Gurgaon, going South-West, is 50 kms. Paschim Vihar, going west is 37 kms. Going due North to Sonepat is 69 kms but there are no IT companies there. The far extremity of greater Noida, going South-East is 51 kms. Only if you live in Sonepat and commute all the way to Gurgaon does it get to 75 kms odd. From Gaziabad even Meerut is only 55 kms.

Did you shift residence recently far off from your place of work or did you take up a new job in a location one or two towns away ? If so why would any one short of utter economic desperation do that. No disrespect meant to you - Just asking out of curiosity. Thanks.

[rohitoasis]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I'm a wee bit confused. How is mandating people to be in office a saving on real estate, transport, catering? May be I'm missing something.

Sir, i believe what user Nalin1 is referring to is a commentary on post #551 and the linked news article where a real estate CEO suggests that real estate business is getting hit due to remote work. The post and link appended below.

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

So, working from home is selfish. For keeping the businesses ticking, people have to WFO, spend and make city vibrant and lively. When layoffs happen, businesses are not selfish and it is just "business"?

Link

[dragonfire]

I mostly work from home, yet fully support the companies for calling the employees back to office. Those who say that they work better at home don't understand that a bulk of the projects that these companies handle require teamwork and is hard to manage when people are working from home. Yes, thing could be better managed by putting in more planning but that is unnecessary overhead for which the clients do not pay.

I am more productive at home if all that I do is write code in a silo, but the moment something has to be designed, some interface/contract/protocol has to be defined, something needs to be reviewed, etc, a face-to-face interaction will get things done faster.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by dragonfire

Yes, thing could be better managed by putting in more planning but that is unnecessary overhead for which the clients do not pay.

Planning for better communication and process improvements to support remote work (which can mostly be done within each team) is more of an overhead and expense than planning and paying for daily cab routes for 500+ employees, cafeteria contracts with menus that change weekly with always complaining employees, real estate and daily building running and maintenance expenses, fancy conference rooms and bean bags, security, team lunches, antakshari/ethnic day events, office christmas celebrations, etc. etc.?

Of course most of these are outsourced (and frankly, I think those contracts are also an unspoken and a big factor in the push for a return to office space), but have to be paid for still, right.

[nettooran]

I am an IT guy and have been working from home for a long time before the pandemic began. I have been doing this for about 7 years now. As a family man, I see a lot of benefits in WFH. I am able to spend more than enough time with my kid. I could literally be on the construction site to manage things when my house was being built. I am saving at least 5k every month on fuel expenses. And finally, I have great flexibility in my work timing.

But that said, WFH has been a disaster for me professionally. I became very complacent with my work. I stopped being competitive. I stopped wanting to grow professionally and was only looking to better myself financially. and deep within me I know I have become lazy and is not now the employee that the company hired me. I just try to finish the work I am assigned and nothing more. Distractions are plenty to an extent that recently I installed a browser extension to block YouTube in my laptop during office hours. (yet to block Team-Bhp ).

The biggest downer is the social life that I miss. Most of my friends from school and college are either out of the country or settled in other states. I am one of the rare species that is happy to have found a good job in my hometown. Naturally, my friends circle used to be my colleagues. Now since the last couple of years I see that I am missing that. My friend list still has colleagues from my previous organization but our meetings are not frequent. I am very much missing a quick chai or random rides. I have a family that loves travelling, so car rides are ok, but my weekend bike rides are mostly solo now. There is no option for me to be hybrid also since my office is a couple of states away.

So, would I change jobs or change location to start working from office? I do not know. Sometimes I feel I should do that, but then WFH has made me so lazy that I don’t think I will come out from this inertia.