[V.Narayan]

https://financesonline.com/work-from-home-trends/

Interesting article on WFH and some statistics around it. WFH, as we all know, will not become an all in or all out situation. A few jobs, products, tasks, skills lend them selves to a 85% WFH; most lend themselves to a WFH ~20% of the time {ie one day in a working week of 5 or 6 days}. When I started my career PCs had not come in and there was only one fax machine in the whole building. When something was urgent we used the telex {some of you may ask, what's that!}. Then came the PC & Fax era; then came emails & conference calls - what chaos emails caused in the 1990s. Internet...social media...and now WFH. Gradually norms for WFH will evolve and it could even become a part of your employment contract. In 3 of the few companies I'm associated with at the Board level we've already closed decisions that over the next one year a percentage of employees on any day will be in a WFH format. And that will now be the permanent format going forward. We assume that CV19 is here to stay, occupied office seats need to be placed wider and hence employees will be on a WFH arrangement varying by role from 1 to 3 days a week. In a 4th company, that I'm associated with, the nature of work and the IT security needed does not lend itself to WFH for the core operations so they have rented a fresh floor in the same building.

My wife and I, both self employed in our own ways, do WFH on some days each week. we are fortunate that our children our young adults and we have our own work study areas. And we agree not to disturb each other in the busy 9AM to 1PM slot and then meet for lunch. Mind you I was surprised how much self discipline I had to learn & exercise to effectively WFH.

[v1p3r]

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/workin...sounds-better/

This is pretty interesting. The culture and knowledge transfer thing are really worrying.

[libranof1987]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

\we've already closed decisions that over the next one year a percentage of employees on any day will be in a WFH format

A few companies have already planned for it from an infrastructure standpoint. Case in point: the offshore backend support divisions of European/British banks in Pune have invested heavily in real estate in the past few years, by building their own office complexes. In the new plans, they are big on free seating: the way it works is, the available office space is probably 60-80% of their total employee strength in the city. Employees have to book a seat for themselves on a portal when they intend to come in. Barring Directors+, no one has a fixed seat, nor is expected (assumed) to be in office each day of the week.

More than anything else, I feel culture will play a big role in wfh being mainstream. There are far too many people in managerial positions who thrive on having a very intrusive control on their team.

A certain company, which bears the name of their social media savvy Chairman, is notorious for having softwares on the employee machines that track minute things like how many hours were spent on work websites, then on non-work websites, punch-in/out in the ODC (not even the office premises), how long the machine was active and so on. From this to wfh, it's a long way forward for such shitty culture.

[vigsom]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

We assume that CV19 is here to stay, occupied office seats need to be placed wider and hence employees will be on a WFH arrangement varying by role from 1 to 3 days a week.

the nature of work and the IT security needed does not lend itself to WFH for the core operations

Although WFH has been a "perk" in the ITES industry, it will become a Cost saver lever now.

The only negative of WFH is working on an unsecured network. Other than that, it will help

1. in seat sharing/seat release on the production floor in BPO

2. give HR the opportunity to include a 2-3 days a week WFH and thus perhaps reduce payroll costs by citing reduced travel to Office.

3. help the Resource Management teams to lower cab costs, and perhaps dehire some Office floors too.

Who knows, there will be a time when secured networks can be set up to enable WFH.

[PrideRed]

While I agree WFH is a win-win situation for both employer and employee, this thing currently works because of lockdown. Once things become normal will every other individual be as productive?

[Miyata]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

WFH, as we all know, will not become an all in or all out situation.

True, there must be some partition (50/50; 70/30; 80/20) to make the most of it. A 100% WFH will have many disadvantages - terrible management and people skills; some tasks could take much longer through digital communications which is better handled with physical communications; on-boarding of new recruits will become a massive challenge; etc.

Originally Posted by vigsom

The only negative of WFH is working on an unsecured network. Other than that, it will help

Who knows, there will be a time when secured networks can be set up to enable WFH.

Recently, I read it on this very forum, I think Samurai had brought it up and I quite liked that perspective - Company certified secure workzones spread around from where people can plug in for some (data) sensitive tasks.

I have quite often looked for some alternatives to working from home - I have checked out local libraries; cafes; parks; etc - but they did not "feel right" for long term working.

At the moment, I am very productive at home and very productive at office. Any place else has been just very distracting or inefficient for various reasons.

One thing though that I find rather strange is this - many folks talk about segregating personal (family) time and work-time. They do not want to answer call / emails when it is not an "office time!"

What I find strange and hypocritical about this - the very same people (ones I have known, not trying to generalize) will spend hours on end attending to personal calls while in the office - on purchasing phone/car/gizmo for themselves or for a friend/family member - somehow they do not see that as intrusion of personal life into office time! Many many such examples and incidents I can rat out just off the cuff even without having to jog my memory to recall just instances.

[Eddy]

I am surprised not a lot of people have mentioned space constraints in working from home. We have 3 people working from home plus 1 kid with online classes going on.

We are facing a space crunch, especially because mobile coverage in two of the four rooms in not good. So all important calls are prioritized and taken from the quieter areas, while at least one person is taking calls sitting in the balcony

[locusjag]

Originally Posted by Eddy

I am surprised not a lot of people have mentioned space constraints in working from home

The Real Estate industry is already sitting up and taking notice of this. I saw a marketing/opinion piece on The Hindu sometime within the past 2 months where a pitch was made for spacious homes that'll allow working from home. With all that black money lying un-laundered, I guess the industry is eyeing an opportunity to plough the money somewhere...

And it is true that most of us have so far probably made do with accommodations that suffice to just sleep over at night on weekdays, since work has anyway expanded to hijack our waking hours. And on weekends, we head out to get away from the horrendousness of our ill-suited rented homes.

Does this mean that many well-endowed ones will buy spacious homes? Maybe. But I dare say that there'll be an uptick in the Packers & Movers industry since people will seek to move to more suitable homes.

[INJAXN]

Satya Nadella in an Interview with NY times has given his thoughts on WFH

https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/m.eco...w/75819905.cms

Few points he said:
- increased productivity of Microsoft employees during WFH is nothing to celebrate and it comes at cost of burning the social capital.
- he misses walking into a physical meeting, which gives one a chance to connect with the person next to him for the two minutes before and after.
-Switching from office set-up to work-from-home mode will be ‘replacing one dogma with another dogma’.

[akshaymahajan]

After more than a month and a half of WFH, I have the following off the top of my head

1. Optional or a couple of days of WFH a week seems like a good idea. Means that offices can cut down on infrastructure by a percentage. Say ~30-50%.
2. #1 requires some planning to ensure that if you need a team meeting, we have the right set of people available.
3. This is a personal opinion - you can use Zoom all you want, but brain storming sessions are not the same virtually. Real white boards work better. If anyone has aced this, please let me know how.
4. In order to do all this, you need to ensure that we maintain a non virtual relation between employees also. So this means that all the people should meet once in a few weeks and socialize. The feeling of community in small offices cannot be recreated online. This is for team meetings more often than town halls, but still.
5. Infrastructure: This has its own challenges. Even if companies decide to setup home offices for people, its not just space, internet and electricity that I see as issues. My latest is a neighbor taking full advantage of the lock down removal to complete construction of his house. I want to say my noise cancellation speaker does a decent job, its not as good as sound proof rooms.
6. Infrastructure: Electricity and internet are still dicey. Even with an inverter and backup internet, I have been in a spot where I could not attend a call. If this was the whole office, it would be ok. But now we get down to an individual so probability increases.
7. Infrastructure: Office spaces are supposed to be designed in a way to ensure productivity. A desk next to a bed may let you me do my job, but its not the same. Ex; We just designed collab spaces in our offices
8. Infrastructure: I use a printer 20 times a year. And a scanner thrice. With full WFH, am I expected to setup all this?
9. Replicating coffee chats/lunch conversations is going to be hard. I work for a SaaS company, so we have a lot of moving parts and for my role, its good to know whats happening ASAP. If we start setting up calls for every conversation, I will need to block my calendar to use the washroom.
10. I mentioned this already on one of the other threads. Forget our jobs - there are a lot of secondary jobs that come in play. From the house keeping to people ensuring that the supplies are brought in - coffee, water, office stuff,etc. And then the whole auto/uber ecosystem. The security and the food vendors. What happens to all that?


Disclaimers:
Bangalore. Unmarried. Techie.

[Rachit.K.Dogra]

Well we just received a message from our CEO last week stating that his goal is to reach 50% workforce in office by year end. I am pretty confident that we will not be in that first 50% considering I am part of a global team and can actually work from home with no major impact to perceived productivity.

As sad as it sounded, I kind of started accepting it. For that though I had to go through a heavy retail therapy session.
The thread on tBHP on work from setups provided the right inspiration.
I got myself a new chair (Featherlite Optima), a new Big monitor (BENQ 24 inch), wireless mouse and keyboard.

I must admit, last 3 days of working on this setup has been much better, much more inviting and definitely ergonomically much more comfortable.

I just hope I don't have to recharge this motivation every now and then with heavy retail therapy. That would end badly!!


Rachit

[JithinR]

Seems WFH is an additional expense for TCS (at least for now).

https://m.economictimes.com/tech/ite...w/76325500.cms

[shankar.balan]

Man is a social animal. There is a lot to be said for personal interaction and socialising at office. It is important. Because the world works on relationships. It is all very well saying this the new normal and new future and all. But that is in my opinion a reactive way of thinking. Once the vaccine for COVID is in sight.

WFH will continue. Some companies will use it to knock off large expensive office infra and improve their bottom line with less expense. Video conferencing will be preferred to Travel at the drop of a hat as is the case now.

I also like WFH. No commute and traffic woes. More time at home. More time to exercise properly, eat meals on time and do other things between times rather than only work. Time with the pet. Time with family. Quiet times.

But I love the people in my office. I love my customers. And I miss that part of my work.

So I will venture that it will NOT and I’d say most decidedly NOT go on like this forever.

And once people become a little more venturesome they will certainly revert to their old ways. Nothing can really prevent that. Public memory is always very short. One year or two down the line, most of us will be looking back at this time, as one of those “aberrations”. Yes, when things come back to near normal, people will definitely be practising a little better hygiene, respect for personal space, a little distancing and no more “in your face”. Maybe it will all have a good fallout of creating a sense of better manners, less pushing and shoving and barging into elevators etc.

Life will reset itself. We just have to wait.

[libranof1987]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Post-coronavirus, 75% of 3.5 lakh TCS employees to permanently work from home; up from 20%

Originally Posted by libranof1987

I am very skeptical of this news and would be very, very surprised if this is achieved.

I'd smelled BS on this right when it was announced. The excuses have started coming in. I feel some wise, fresh out of bschool HR guys must have come up with fancy metrics on how they can achieve this and how TCS will benefit from it. And then they met with the nemesis of most such large organizations: culture.

It's not there on this article but on the one that's published on LinkedIn, Chandra said the actual figure will be 40-70%.

Employees working from home during the nationwide lockdown was not a cost-saving measure for TCSNSE -1.53 % and, in fact, added to expenses, said Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, pointing out that the IT services provider had already signed long-term leases for its offices

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...0.cms?from=mdr

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

I'd smelled BS on this right when it was announced. The excuses have started coming in. I feel some wise, fresh out of bschool HR guys must have come up with fancy metrics on how they can achieve this and how TCS will benefit from it. And then they met with the nemesis of most such large organizations: culture.

More so, it was the flavor of the week in those days. You see, such big shots expected to stay in the news all the time. The media chases them regularly for comments and interviews and this is also part of their job profile. More publicity for the company, more indirect benefits for them. Hence they make these 'in tune with times' statements with a nicely worded clause put in the same. But then we need catchy headlines to read the full article, right? Hence it was some masala news and nothing else at that time.

But yes, there is an uptick in the acceptance of 'WFH' and the number of people doing so is increasing.

However, this is India. So I see this as a negative for me as an employee and as a human. Expectation of 24x7 availability will rise and so will global competition. Expenses related to managing the setup and everything related will now be shifted towards the employee eventually. My work involves a mix of both - working in silo and working with people. I miss the later part while saving my daily travel time. I may appear to be more productive right now but that is only because I can work longer hours now compared to before.

Anyways, the market will figure out its own equilibrium over time and no one can predict it 100%