WFH: a neglected potential strategy!

Working in IT industry does have a benefit of working from home, at times. Other folks who are in operations or any other jobs that need to be done onsite or on the operations floor do not enjoy this benefit. For an outsider, it may be a jackpot: to work while playing with kids or enjoying the waffles prepared by your wife.

No one can deny the fact that it’s definitely a great convenience for employees, and, at times, employees base their decisions of taking the job on such factors. Nonetheless, these benefits are not only limited to the employees, but also they offer a great advantage to employers.

Statistically speaking, it would easily cost a company at least $1000 per head per month to maintain a cube and to keep up the office, although it depends upon variety of factors including location of the office, rent of the property, electricity charges, condition of the building, attitude of the employees, and other regulatory and government issues. If you factor in all these costs, perhaps $1000 will sound on the lower side.

Although companies have direct saving up to $1000 and they don’t usually spend on the infrastructure an employee has to set up for the home office, companies, usually, are very reluctant on this option. The resistance, however, is not typically from the top management, it’s actually self-inflicted by the employees. You must be surprised to learn about this fact that when it is in the benefit of both employer and employees, why would employees not encourage this option?

The answer to this question lies in the attitude of the employees–mostly, supervisors. First, management needs to make sure that they have clear policies on setting these policies. Sometimes management avoids this option as supervisors resist by claiming that productivity is low due to lack of collaboration. Even if the claim about low productivity is true, management needs to evaluate whether the productivity is low to an extent that it can justify the cost saving of $1000 per head per month. Next, supervisors, at times, think that by allowing fellow employees to work remotely, putting control measures is extremely difficult. Although I agree with them on this point, control measures may, however, not work even if employees are not serious about their work in the office itself. Secondly, effective controls can be set up by setting clear objectives and thus avoiding the need for monitoring. Finally, management thinks that security may be at risk as they have to allow employees to carry the data outside of office premises. Yes, I agree that if companies do not have security infrastructure in place, it may be a challenge for some of them. But since most of the companies expect employees to work off hours and employees cannot be always online in the office, companies will have to allow employees to carry the data outside anyways, so this may again not be very valid reason for not reducing the cost for the company.

An Often Overlooked Element!

Leadership is challenging, but recruiting the right leader is even a bigger challenge. Involved in the recruitment myself, I have noticed that while choosing a leader, recruiter looks for many attributes including assertiveness, confidence, persuasion, and charisma. But are these enough? In spite of all these qualities, when I look at leaders around me I feel that something is always missing. Perhaps the most important element to look in a leader is Negativity.

I am not suggesting that even if a leader is extremely positive, he or she will be enormously successful. Of course, other elements are equally important. But negative attitude does play a very important role in shaping up a leader’s personality and team’s morale. I have worked with several role models in my career and whenever I get a chance, I try to analyze their personality.

One manager in my current company had a habit of not trusting his members. Rather than cheering them, he was often found sarcastically laughing and making comments, such as “I knew that you will not be able to do it”. Even if a leader believes that a resource does not have particular skill, or perhaps she doesn’t have aptitude to learn it, comments such as these are only going to demotivate the resource and hurt the productivity even more. Even supposing that such comments are made in positive light, no one would consider these comments as lesson and try to learn from them. If so, what do these leaders get by making such comments? Frankly, I could not find answer to this question.

While speaking to another colleague who was not happy with her current manager, I realized that how deep the impact negativity may have. Even though she was a good resource, she lost complete confidence in her abilities due to the negative attitude of her manager. In fact, she mentioned that if my current manager thinks that I am not good enough, I must not be good, and that who else can assess me except my manager? I tried to convince her that you are doing extremely well, but when negativity creeps in one’s mind, even genuine efforts may not prove very useful.

Incidents such as these makes you think that even if a leader doesn’t have other important qualities, it doesn’t matter as long as the leader has positive attitude. Positive attitude should be the first founding stone of a good leadership. A good leader backs the team off all the time and keeps the spirit of the team high while continuously tapping on the back as a mother does to her son.

Untrustworthy Trust

Most of the organizations have tendency to doubt new employees. However, once the trust is established, everyone stops questioning trusted employees. In fact, a level of fear spreads at a place where the most knowledgeable subject matter expert is questioned. After all, who dares to question mighty god.

If the environment of questioning is not fostered from the top management, organization is on a sure path to disaster. I was talking to my old colleague about the culture at her company. She mentioned that there are some of the people in her company who are excellent. They have done enough for the company that they can be trusted blindly. As we talked more about the decisions made in her company, she said, “Since it is Mt Best’s solution, it is the best”

However, from my experience, I can clearly tell that those decisions were not made carefully. Although I agree that without trust, it’s hard to retain the best talent in the company, the process of scrutiny should not be stopped, especially for the crucial decisions.

These double standards can also be noticed in other situations. For example, everything else equal, face value does influence the way we think and believe. I remember those comments when I started my career, “he is just out from the college!” Not looking old enough was the only reason for them to not believe me. At times, I contemplated on keeping mustaches and beard to look mature.  I don’t disagree that with time comes maturity. But if I recall correctly, if I had said the same thing 10 years back as I do today, people wouldn’t have believed me. Nothing has been changed since then, except few grey hairs on my head.

Statistically speaking, since past performance is not a true indicator of future returns, a company cannot rely on the trusted resources blindly to yield future returns without thorough analysis. A close scrutiny of new employees is definitely needed, but it wouldn’t hurt to question veterans.