[iskandariya]

Originally Posted by Zippy_wheels

I still continue to work from home but in order to be successful one needs to be ready with a proper set-up. A seperate room without disturbance, a good work desk, ergonomic chair, good monitors, a fast and stable internet, backup power etc. needs to be in place even if your company doesnt sponsor these.

Agreed dedicated Room, Proper Seating Table and other requirements, the Space I have in my Home Office is more than I would ever be able to get in Office Office, plus the Food is great so is snack time. Add to it commute time is 0.

I understand not all jobs can be done from home, but not all sectors requires one to be in office. Especially when the Team is spread across the globle how does reporting to office where no one of my team reports makes sense.

[whencut86]

Originally Posted by Zippy_wheels

I now have a better setup than what the office offers, so I can get more work done from home than I can, from the office.

I have tried going to office since its not that far, for a change and to catchup with friends, but I find I cant really get much work done from there.

This is what is bothering me now with the weekly 3 day WFO mandate. I joined the organization a few months back and WFO mandate is really putting me off. I am under a horizontal BU and get into delivery roles as and when required. The BU does not have designated seats or space allotted and it is a pain getting seats during 3 days every week I go to office. Some days, I sit on small accent chairs or ottoman like chairs in corridors causing back aches. They had hired in good numbers during WFH time and now don't have space to accommodate everyone in office. All senior management folks have personal office rooms and they just pass a mandate asking all employees to come to office without even bothering to see if employees have chairs and desks to sit and work.

I have a very good WFH setup and my productivity is much better at home and no one will disturb me in my study. There is way too much disturbance in office with all noise around that there is less focus on work most of the times. Raised these concerns but to no avail. Now I travel 1-1.5 hours one way to office and spend 1 hours in office and come back home and login. Waste of time, petrol, money and productivity.

I get irritated when I see these save the environment mails in office. Here they are making us waste resources and cause pollution simply to register a swipe in office and track this and they are sending mails to save environment and about planting saplings. Very frustrating nowadays and no one seems to really bothered or care but insist that it is a corporate mandate to be followed strictly.

[lazy]

Looking at the traffic situation on our roads, I totally believe that it is borderline criminal decisioning by company managements to enforce WFO.

Yes, there are jobs that necessitate being physically present in the office, by all means those should be WFO. But, pray someone explain why does a coder, code tester, payroll department, accounts/finance department, business development department, project managers, procurement department, documentation team, sales support team, and so many other roles need to WFO !! Once in a while meetings are okay, but definitely not 3-5 days WFO.

Yes, not everyone have a comfortable home office setup, so let them choose to go to office, why force everyone.

Look at the world around us - companies are choosing to pay fat executive bonuses instead of giving hikes, downsizing at every opportunity, high fuel costs, super high real estate costs, food inflation, etc - wouldn't it help employees livelihoods if they can save money/energy/time/productivity by WFH.

cheers
lazy

[warrioraks]

Originally Posted by warrioraks

At a very fundamental level, challenges in the WFH model are very similar to IT near-shore models. Anyone who has setup nearshore hubs would know the short term pain. These things are pursued only because top management sees financial merit in long term even though there are significant teething issues in the short term.
The same would apply for WFH in a post-Covid world. Organisations where management sees financial merits of WFH would promote it extensively and others who don’t will come back to square one eventually.

If I have to hazard a guess today - Post Covid working world will not be very different from the pre-Covid working world. Would like to revisit this post in 2025!

Revisiting my thoughts after 2 years of this post.
I feel that in a country like ours, work from home is definitely not the future for many.

Even at the height of Covid, had animated discussions with friends who were very confident that work from home is here to stay. I always had a different view. Now those friends are already going to office 4 days a week and my office has mandated RTO for 2 days a week as well.

So as of today, most companies are in hybrid mode with atleast 2-3 days in office. I think within next couple of years, 4-5 days in office will become a norm for majority of the jobs and wfh will become a luxury based on your manager discretion, just like the pre-Covid world.

[Zippy_wheels]

Originally Posted by whencut86

I get irritated when I see these save the environment mails in office. Here they are making us waste resources and cause pollution simply to register a swipe in office and track this and they are sending mails to save environment and about planting saplings. Very frustrating nowadays and no one seems to really bothered or care but insist that it is a corporate mandate to be followed strictly.

This is a really sad situation. Common sense is not so common these days. Hope the situation gets better for you. For us thankfully there are no death of chairs and space in office, in fact its still mostly deserted.

[Dodge_Viper]

My current organisation till now was flexible. Those who wish to work remotely can do so, those to want to come to office can come. But one fine day one of account head decided to end this comfort by mandating 3 day wfo. Note this was not an organisational mandate but account level mandate. And he chose a great time to do this - monsoons. Then started the horrifying commute over water logged and pothole ridden roads. Nightmarish traffic snarls. Kilometres and kilometres of traffic jams. All this to do what? Show your face in office. My case is worst. I am the only offshore resource and everyone else is in another country.

And one thing I dont understand is the stupid reason which they give - " Everyone was coming to office pre-covid". Yes agree but Covid times also proved that it can be BAU from wfh as well. Because nobody had tried this method before, maybe barring few companies.

Another reason which is given - "People waste time in wfh". Those who want to waste time will waste it anyways even if they are in office. Count the number of tea breaks, smoke breaks, extended lunch breaks. Lazy a** people will stay lazy no matter what.

My simple take on this is, keep it flexible and voluntary. I am 100% sure if there are 10 people who like wfh then there are 10 equal people who enjoy wfo as well. But alas the number of sadistic managers and heads wont let it happen. They will still want people to get tortured to death in traveling, get frustrated till they reach office and still expect to give 200%.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Dodge_Viper

Note this was not an organisational mandate but account level mandate.

Yep, this is something to be aware of when scouting for remote roles - does the organization have a policy in place, or is it vague. 'Manager's discretion' means you're one manager change to an old-style manager away from losing that option. There are a few companies who have adopted remote-first as an official policy and those are the safest bet. Best is to ask if there are already any employees who are working in that model, say in a different city where there is no office.

[IndieGooner]

Originally Posted by am1m

Yep, this is something to be aware of when scouting for remote roles - does the organization have a policy in place, or is it vague. 'Manager's discretion' means you're one manager change to an old-style manager away from losing that option. There are a few companies who have adopted remote-first as an official policy and those are the safest bet. Best is to ask if there are already any employees who are working in that model, say in a different city where there is no office.

I am quite curious to know what companies are offering such remote roles today. Most of the people in my circle work for large services or product firms and nearly all of them require a fixed number of days in office. Those that don't, are still on the wall and I assume are eager to be back in office once attrition rates become manageable. Google search yielded some articles but I know for a fact that many of the companies listed in those do require WFO in some degree.

Would it violate forum rules for members to name companies that are offering WFH as a valid HR approved policy today?

[subraiyr]

Originally Posted by whencut86

This is what is bothering me now with the weekly 3-day WFO mandate. I joined the organization a few months back and the WFO mandate is really putting me off.

I get irritated when I see these save the environment mails in office. Here they are making us waste resources and cause pollution simply to register a swipe in office and track this and they are sending mails to save environment and about planting saplings. Very frustrating nowadays and no one seems to really bothered or care but insist that it is a corporate mandate to be followed strictly.

Absolutely agree with the points here. I work with a large firm that cuts across IT/ITES/Consulting business. Some of the things mentioned here are true to this industry esp if you are in a function that is not administrative in nature. So this one is to be read in conjunction with PMO/Consulting/Development workers and not support staff.
New facility, state-of-the-art desks/seats/interiors, etc. Absolutely open office, all hot desks, no barriers across desks, lots of open spaces for breakouts, and simply plush looking
Mandate to work from the office. Not clear if it is 1 day or all days, but our function (consulting) decided 3 days in the office. With this situation, some of the challenges I see with the team are as follows

1. Travel time - Before RTO, I had my team available to start work from 8:30 am to 9 am in the morning. The end was not fixed as we had customer calls late in the evening. However, I figured the team was available 90% of the time to take up meetings, workshops, work, etc. With RTO, the team comes in by 11 am and leaves for home around 4 pm, with at least 1 hour of lunch fully utilized and a couple of coffee breaks as well. Somehow I see productive time reducing. Availability of people has come down

2. By 10 am the office is full up and if you are the latecomer, you are begging around for desks. Across a population of close to 500, we have 100 seats allocated. Teams do not sit together as they are hot desks.

3. Ergonomics - With hot desks, open offices working through meetings, conference calls have become a challenge. Too much noise in the office and meeting rooms which are far fewer in number seems booked for the entire day by senior folks thanks to their secretaries. These people do a stellar job of squatting on prime real estate

4. Diversity Challenges - We have a high diversity ratio which tends to mean that a lot of our folks are mothers/new mothers who have now managed to get their house in order and work effectively. Some of them are away from their base location in Tier 2 cities with grounded support. Now they have to uproot and come back to their home location. Plus the challenges of managing household/travel etc. Some of you may point out that this was the case pre covid, but the bottom line is that precovid diversity was not high. Now it has corrected itself. Some of our best performers are women and to see them face such challenges is tough. In the name of diversity, we hired returning mothers and a lot of such folks who had left corporate to support families. Now tables are turning for them

5. About 90% of our work is client-facing. We have effectively done this remotely from India in the last 2 to 3 years. If it is the question of continuing the same kind of work, it doesn't matter if we are remote or in the office. The client is still miles away from us

6. Networking/Idea Generations: If in the last 2/3 years, this has happened effectively, what are we trying to achieve by upsetting the apple cart? Today, I can pick up a phone and talk to a couple of my team members and brainstorm. And if I want to do it on a larger scale, I can do that through structured meetings. The point that ideas will flow during a cooler conversation is not true. As far as networking is concerned, people just do not have time to do that since they are already pressed for time with travel

7. Shift in mindset - I am also seeing a shift in mindset in some of our folks. The profession has become one part of life. People are happy to give their 100% or let us say 9 hours of work. Beyond that, they have started caring about their health, family, well-being, etc. There are folks in my team who struggle to come early to the office because they cannot give up their 1 hour of tennis or swimming. There are folks in my team who are happy to take a few days' breaks every 2 months to spend time with family.

8. Sustainability - This has become a big topic and our firm has taken some huge targets for sustainability. With this in mind, not sure how having large offices and moving a large number of people into offices will play a part in carbon footprint reduction. Seems counter-intuitive

I am not saying there is no flip side to it. I am sure the folks with lower quality infra such as connectivity, power, etc would love to get back to the office. Hell, I love to work from an office in summer thanks to central aircon. But to make it a mandate and not allow individuals to make a choice seems a poor decision. You need to measure output for success rather than measure inputs or throughputs.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by IndieGooner

I am quite curious to know what companies are offering such remote roles today.

The company I work at right now is one such. The previous company I worked at (and I left after 10 years because they didn't have a remote policy in place, post-Covid!) moved to a remote-first policy last year after several people left (my former colleagues all work remote now). The company my wife works at allows remote work for non-client facing roles and as a matter of policy, even before Covid. For obvious reasons, I can't name these 3, anonymity on a forum is still a nice thing.

The company I work at is very small, the one I left has about 800 employees in India and a lot more world-wide. The 3rd one is referred to is very, very large, a global giant.

Big companies I haven't worked at and have declared the remote first policy on their website include Atlassian and Crowdstrike. Several other smaller ones I've come across that list remote job postings on LinkedIn for what I do.

But in general, it's going to be the smaller companies who haven't invested in gigantic office space that are more likely to offer such flexibility. So you are correct about that, the bigger IT service companies are unlikely to do so.

[Gansan]

Work from home is a privilege, not a right. If the employer allows it, good. If they don't,one can always change his employer. WFH is possible for only a small privileged section of the work force, mainly in the IT sector. The vast majority across various sectors have to attend office due to the nature of their work.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Gansan

Work from home is a privilege, not a right. If the employer allows it, good. If they don't,one can always change his employer. WFH is possible for only a small privileged section of the work force, mainly in the IT sector. The vast majority across various sectors have to attend office due to the nature of their work.

I think we've been through this several times on the thread. Yes, this is discussing roles and work that can actually be done remote and yes, we are lucky to have that option.

Similarly, owning a car is a privilege for the majority of the country. Yet, do we add that disclaimer on each car review thread on the forum?

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by Gansan

Work from home is a privilege, not a right. If the employer allows it, good. If they don't,one can always change his employer. WFH is possible for only a small privileged section of the work force, mainly in the IT sector. The vast majority across various sectors have to attend office due to the nature of their work.

+1. Moreover, for non-IT field, WFH is additional pain. They have to visit office as part of their profile and then bring work to home since WFH is the 'in-thing' now. So that increases the stress levels in some cases

[Gansan]

Huge IT parks and office spaces have been created by the all powerful real estate people/lobby. Really,really powerful people including politicians have invested huge money in those properties. They won't sit and watch those investments go up in smoke.

Whole huge economic eco systems (retail,transport, hospitality etc) had come up and were thriving in and around the IT belts in every city, based mainly on the footfalls of the IT industry employees in those areas. They have been in the doldrums. And they are politically active.

Considering the above two points alone, I feel it is not only that the IT companies themselves are pulling their employees to the offices. There is also a push factor from the governments which may be gently twisting the arms of those companies to call off WFH.

[iskandariya]

Originally Posted by Gansan

Huge IT parks and office spaces have been created by the all powerful real estate people/lobby. Really,really powerful people including politicians have invested huge money in those properties. They won't sit and watch those investments go up in smoke.

Whole huge economic eco systems (retail,transport, hospitality etc) had come up and were thriving in and around the IT belts in every city, based mainly on the footfalls of the IT industry employees in those areas. They have been in the doldrums. And they are politically active.

Considering the above two points alone, I feel it is not only that the IT companies themselves are pulling their employees to the offices. There is also a push factor from the governments which may be gently twisting the arms of those companies to call off WFH.

Wholly Agreed, and it is even more motivating. Rebel Feeling; where you know they aren't telling the truth and you can feel the negative pushing coming in. Best part is all those traffic rules go to toast when vehicles are parked on the road and people are treated dispensable. I condemn that feeling for Humans, where the worth is only the desk and system. QWL is important.

If you see Dutch, they are particular about timing ; French revolted the whole country against extension of working age limit for they wanted to enjoy retirement. Japanese are particular about work and enrichment. Europeans no one can ask them to work a minute above. Americans mobile number is not shared on OOO

We never speak up , I saw someone said we need to understand WFH is a privilege, like every Voter matters it is the employees collective which matters what the companies have to offer.

If you see companies like Naggaro and others even PWC have started to offer this in their job description.

At one point of time India was opportune and we saw growth, but now if we need to focus on India growth; else if people need to Work from Office like all IT professionals realise their are better settings with better regulations to do that and move out of country. Then we end up saying so and so is of Indian Origin and what not to console ourselves.

There needs to be some lucrativeness left in the long terms perspective of people working here. Family and simple life of Tier 2/3/4 cities is one of them.