‘WFH’ is the new buzzword. Even those forced to stay at home and participate in household chores appear determined to make it a part of their lifestyle, after the lockdown ends. It is the one-stop solution that’s expected to help lower costs while reducing air pollution. Is WFH a ready-to-eat meal or does it require chopping, cleaning and cooking before it can be served?

The office, as we know it, is a place where people come together every morning and spend 8-10 hours of a day, 5-6 days every week. It started taking shape with the advent of lawyers and other professionals in parts of Europe during the 17th Century; by late 19th and early 20th Centuries, it had become the norm.

Office work was defined as a series of tasks that could be rationalised, standardised and set up as a production regime. Hierarchy and supervision ensured that people worked the hours they were paid for and timekeeping ensured discipline. In the absence of connectivity, having everyone under one roof helped collaboration and communication.

Many decades after computers crawled from the insides of severely air conditioned rooms into the laps of humans, and in times that AI&ML have become commonplace, a walk through an office in the old part of the town could make you feel that you’re still living in the early 20th Century. Humans resist change if it disturbs their routine and grudgingly accept it only after it starts to threaten their existence. Yet we all pay lip service to every new fad, whether it suits us or not.

Adapting to changes

Most organisations lie on a scale where the extreme left means firms that are housed in open plan offices/located in shared work spaces/most people working from home for most of the week. On the right end are the ones described in the paragraph above.

The firms on the right, which would be the largest in number, need to make a few changes before they think about WFH.

Business is not controlled via licensing any more and there aren’t just one or two firms authorised by the government operating in a category. The hyper-competitive era we live in has new players entering and old ones downing shutters, as the wheels of technology turn even in highly regulated, licensed categories. Hence, it is pertinent for those at the helm of these firms to be close to the customer and listen to them on time and without any nuance. More than 4-5 layers between the top and the employee facing the customer could prevent that. If the organisation still carries designations like ‘Senior Executive Deputy General Manager’, it’s time for a rethink. Tata Sky, for instance, started with nine levels between the helm and the customer-facing colleagues. Today, we have five levels in between, and we’ve been aiming to reduce it to four.

In uncertain times like these, the next disruption is most likely to come from a source you did not expect. Tata Sky had three business-threatening curve balls hurled at us in the last year. They came from a supplier, the sector regulator, and finally, nature. None of these were even a part of our BCP. An agile way of working that gets people to huddle in teams and take quick decisions, for which they’re already empowered, is one way to not only survive but thrive when disaster strikes.

Work culture

Culture plays an important role in helping businesses take speedy decisions by not letting information and instructions follow the traditional path of organisation hierarchy. A mid-level manager does not need to ask his superior, who tells his superior, who in turn informs his peer, who instructs his team member, who finally orders his subordinate something that the two mid-level managers, in different functions, could have just discussed and agreed over a quick chat on the phone or in the corridor. A collaborative culture eats a hierarchical one for breakfast.

Having flattened the organisation and after successfully nurturing a collaborative culture over many years, we have been trying to encourage WFH for a long while, as it felt like the natural next step. Yet we didn’t gain much ground. The reasons thrown at us seemed logical, as people lived in smaller homes with many people sharing the space, and the connectivity wasn’t great either. When Covid became a reality and instructions to work from home did not work, an informal dipstick revealed that some people were coming to work out of respect since their manager was at work, while others were there to safeguard their appraisal rating because their peer was present.

Yet the same colleagues have been churning more output than ever before, for over a month now. This despite the fact that we’d stopped old-world rituals like marking attendance, leave accumulation and encashment, etc ages ago. Culture change also requires senior management to lead by example.

Telecom has enabled data to move instantly and allows people to be face to face without physically facing each other. Yet, I’ve often spent over 24 hours away from home, for a two-hour meeting in another town, with another 3-4 people having done the same. Today, I’m a part of 3-5 such meetings every day, without having stepped on a plane or stayed at a hotel for six weeks. Those reporting to me have been given full attention during this time. This span could be applicable to all levels of organization hierarchy as well as to the number of partners handled by an individual. A larger span, per force facilitates higher empowerment and minimal supervision.

Only after the structural and cultural changes have been embedded in the organisation, should the subject of WFH be discussed. WFH is not the dog, it’s the tail.

The writer is MD & CEO, Tata Sky