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-   -   Work From Home (WFH): Is this the future for many? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/221831-work-home-wfh-future-many-58.html)

I was not exactly surprised by the news, since this has been brewing for a while in a substantial number of MNCs.

I'm more surprised by the wording used by IBM. Several excerpts from the article indicate that they are doubling down on the 'mandated work-from-office days' approach, come what may. IBM's messaging carries a rather decisive tone, which probably indicates the direction from the top is clear and irreversible for now, and that everybody else needs to only focus on implementing it.

The message that employees need to work from office for an agreed number of days has been there for quite a while though, probably from 2021.

In fact, we were notified in my townhall with my CHRO of my company recently, that our track record in hybrid working has not been great. And that if this trend continued, there is only going to be markedly lesser flexibility and not more.

And soon after, we were 'unofficially advised' that we need to complete at least 8 hours of work (excluding any breaks) on the days we were mandated to work from office premises. Because this 'is agreed upon in our employment contract' (I checked mine and it actually was).

While a revert to pre-Covid pattern of 5-day working might not be possible at the moment, this requirement of mandated days of working from office is only going to increase - at least in most MNCs and large-scale firms operating in India.

Next, SAP says something similar and I'll not be surprised if more companies follow suit.

https://www.businesstoday.in/technol...092-2024-02-04

IBM has been a WFH friendly company. However, some functions are best done with the team being at office. Some others did not need the team to be co-located. Even with such functions, it can be helpful for managers to be at office more than the team - even if they are reluctant to come in more than their team.

Employees who can work remotely typically do work which is not routine or repititive in nature, which can be quantified easily. Hence, How would the above mandate of showing 8 hours work be demonstrated? Is it merely being on the premises for at least 8 hours + breaks?

It's the same in our company as well. On a work from office day, we are expected to be in office premises at least 8.5 - 9 hours considering 8 hours work + breaks.

It is not the finest way of doing this, but the first swipe into, and the last swipe out of, the work area is recorded and the time taken for breaks (since you need to step out of the work area to eat or use the restroom) is subtracted.
I realised that we don't have an option to change the decision and so we're forced to make our peace with it.

Tata Consultancy Services issues final warning to employees working from home.

https://www.livemint.com/companies/n...310508591.html

The IT behemoth has granted an extension until the upcoming month, they have emphasized that this extension will be the last, and any failure to adhere to the directive will result in significant repercussions.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has issued a final notice to employees who are continuing to work remotely, directing them to resume office duties starting from March. Although the IT behemoth has granted an extension until the upcoming month, they have emphasized that this extension will be the last, and any failure to adhere to the directive will result in significant repercussions, as reported by The Economic Times.

Like most IT service providers cyber security is first on the minds of the corporations as a risk that ballons with WFH. The other is employees joining on-line, working WFH and quitting on line with zero in-person interface with the company/teams. Apparently TCS had 40,000 such employees.

I fail to understand why they keep issuing threats, when they can easily start taking action.

Practically, all they have to start doing is to throttle the VPN servers that allow remote logins and authentications. They can always have per-employee login policies that dictate which days they can log in remotely, for how many days in a month, how many hours in a month, etc. All these are obviously automated, and can be easily enforced once the higher ups and teams decide on, and publicize the policy within each team. On days other than these, they need to log in from office, in which case you don't need VPN.

Days on which employees neither log in remotely (probably because the system disallows them as per policy), nor through physical presence in office, can be flagged as absence. Yes, there could be minor flaws and holes here, but this should give a good enough data point to start off with. The data can weed out the most hardcore of rebels, and that is half the battle won.

Involuntary attrition of 'desirable' staff is tricky and expensive (time, $$$ and customer relationship impact).

Much as the popular narrative pushed in the media might lean towards 'It's only the lazy troublemakers anyway!' , reality is far more nuanced.

Mentioned it somewhere else on the forum - This is all a game of demand and supply. It is an employer's market, so they dictate the rules. Tomorrow if we see another jump in the job market, most of these companies will take no time to revert their anti-wfh stance.

Right now, most large companies (atleast in tech) are struggling with over-hiring and cost-pressures. They are more than willing to let go of people who don't comply. It's a way to force attrition and avoid getting on the layoff bandwagon as much as possible.

Just like it took most people some time to get used to wfh (at the time of Covid), adapting to work from office will also be a gradual process. But it's just a matter of time.

I concur. Experience tells me that more companies would find it easier to make life difficult for employees so that they leave on their own (thus entitling them to only notice pay) as opposed to the company initiating a role redundancy (and therefore entitling them to a severance package as well).

That said, if I were given a free rein and a direct mandate to reduce headcount by a specific date, I'd probably go after the 'defaulters' with the the sickle of disciplinary action citing employment contract violation. That would be the efficient (albeit somewhat brutal) way to slice through this issue. And of course, I'd also run the risk of labour cases being filed against the company. It all depends on how much risk and cost the company is willing to bear.

And if I am randomly postulating this on an online forum, I'm pretty sure there would be B-school grads running risk analysis on such methods in several companies right now.

Not sure I got my point across.

While the media narrative is primarily pushing the idea that the so called 'rebels' are primarily lazy, troublemaking, unproductive employees that are best gotten rid of pronto, the reality is there's a fair amount of productive and important (some even critical) 'desirable' employees the companies don't want to lose, if it can be helped, mixed in the 'rebel' bunch, who also don't want to return to office for various reasons.

While it's great to hypothesize that the two kinds are easily distinguishable, the real world works differently. In large setups, it sometimes takes removing a cog from the wheel to realise just how much weight it was carrying beyond its on-paper capacity, and it's a nightmare to fix a cog on a wheel that can't be taken off for repairs.

It was silly to try a one-size-fits-all approach implementing remote work, it's silly dismantling it the same way too. Trusting the MBA consultant types over actual productive employees who run the business has sunk many a ship in the past, but fascination with quarterly results at the cost of long-term business health does strange things to people.

No, I get that. I just responded only to the first part of your post earlier - related to why companies don't just take action, but rather keep issuing warnings. I had pointed out the redundancy cost factor too, is all.

The 'lazy rebels are the ones who refused to work from office' is a carefully planted narrative. Because it could sway the public perception when some people are eventually forced out of the company.

These days, discussions on cost savings and efficiency seem to hold more importance than discussions on wellbeing. It almost feels as though the collective well of sympathy has been dried out by COVID and there's nothing left.

WFO is far better if your team is under crunch and understaffed. You definitely get less work done than WFH, but a reasonable manager/boss understands that 'crunch' better in WFO compared to WFH.

Here is a good article about reason for return to office push.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article...ffice-mandates

In India, the SEZ rules is an additional reason for return to office mandates.