A direct manifestation of a remote-first economy is a change in how employees and workers now look at work in general.

Having spent a lot of time with themselves and working remotely, people seem to have increased their expectations regarding their job. They now look for more opportunities to grow and thrive and may become ‘job hoppers’ in search of positions and roles that align with their new idea of work and life. A lot of the conversation seems to have turned to “Why should I work for you”.

Retaining employees in a world of ‘job hoppers’ doesn’t have to be difficult. Companies simply need to do a bit more to meet these new employee requisites.

Of course, for starters, a people-first culture and policy should be adopted. Importantly, we need to do that without adding risk to the business – which is where risk management comes in as the very first step to the transition.

In addition, employee engagement is something that can never be overstated. And it needs even more effort in a remote and hybrid work environment. Giving your workers a voice in the organization works in more ways than one. They feel heard, and you get honest suggestions about what the core problems are and how they can be addressed.

This, in turn, makes employees place faith in the company. Discussions about long-term relationships and employee responsibilities become more seamless.

Apart from this, it would help management to keep analyzing who is competing for their company’s employees and work towards adjusting compensation packages and other worker benefits to avoid resignations. Again, remote and hybrid work tends to separate the wheat and the chaff in terms of work delivery.

Author(s)– People Practices Team – Jackstien Practices

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When former banker Nishant Shah moved on from his lucrative career as Head of Operating Risk in JPMorgan India, to start his own firm, he was faced with what is often known as the ‘consulting conundrum.’ The conundrum is that while risk management and consulting expertise solves problems and creates gain for clients in the shorter term, it needs to be supported by well-designed technology to sustain those benefits over the long-term.

At the same time, stand-alone technological solutions are inadequate. This is because, to be able to deploy the underlying technology meaningfully, subject matter expertise is critical. Imagine engineers trying to create hearing aids without the expertise of an audiologist or, say, developers attempting to program contract management software without a lawyer.
A meaningful marriage of consulting and technology is difficult but essential. However, it remains rare, maybe because it is so difficult.

Nishant Shah founded Jackstien Practices, a risk and transition management firm with a stated mission of, amongst others, helping organisations and businesses design and adapt to the new world of remote and hybrid work.

In discussion with Nishant, we realised that remote and hybrid work was a field of study that affected every aspect of work as we know it today, much like law, finance, or psychology. There was, however, precious little by way of expertise in this domain. Ideally placed to fill this gap as an industry and operating risk expert and consummate futurist, Nishant had recognised the advent of remote and hybrid work future years ago and founded Jackstien Practices as the marriage of his passions.

“Four hours on the road everyday gave me enough time to think it through” he jokes.

However, the consulting conundrum remained. The immediate next step for Shah was to find the right technology partners to design high quality software solutions for his domain in Banking, Financial Service, and Insurance. The BFSI sector expends upwards of Rs 750,000 million annually, a figure that will likely increase to combat the threat of the FinTech sector.
To rise to the challenge of servicing this industry, Jackstien Practices and Acies Consulting joined forces to create a new entity.

Acies Consulting, a relatively young company are already leaders in their own right. Acies is an award-winning company led by industry stalwarts with more than a century of combined expertise in finance and technology.

The new entity, christened Jonosfero International LLP was founded this year, a product of domain expertise and technology as the answer to the consulting conundrum.
Jonosfero International is already far along the path towards releasing its top tier solutions, with plans to grow to a $350 million entity in under five years, surpassing international best practices in intelligent design.

“For technology solutions, basic design briefs are the easy part if you want to create systems that are just one thing to one person” says Nishant Shah who is the CEO of Jonosfero International “For truly usable multi-faceted systems, it takes expertise to combine enterprise controls with intuitive systems that work for everyone, from sales personnel to compliance departments to HR departments to finance departments”

Hybrid work is one of the most complex challenges organizations face. At the same time, it is one of the most rewarding opportunities as well.

“We put a lot of thought into designing a multi-faceted Hybrid work system for our clients, with every function assessed separately against its own unique parameters to design the perfect hybrid work architecture that works for organizations, functions, and individuals. Crucially, there is a need for sustainable technology that helps maintain and build on our design architecture. For example, many applications today claim to help manage hybrid work but are limited to helping reserve ‘hot-desks.’ In that sense, they are simply versions of applications used to book seats in a theatre. These basic systems feel inadequate because they don’t help to design, manage, or set the parameters based on which the organization can protect its financial, operational, people, stakeholder, and regulatory interests on a day-to-day basis. Building such a system has proven a challenge worldwide and at Jonosfero International, we aim to be the first to do it” says Nishant Shah.

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The global experiment in remote working has proven to be a resounding success. However, two roles in today’s organizations have been impacted significantly – the Chief Technology Officer and the Chief Human Resources Officer.

While the CTOs have a playbook that is somewhat ready to use, CHROs are struggling with unprecedented challenges; from lack of over-arching policies, structures, processes, compliances and performance metrics to adapting the work force to work in the new normal.

The disconnect between the younger generation’s loathing for the ‘babu-culture’ has only served to widen this rift and heighten the preference for remote work.

To start with, CHROs need to think about the impact of remote work on the plethora of Labour Laws across the Centre, States and UTs that require hundreds of different filings. The impact spreads across the statutory records under various acts that regulate hours of work, remuneration, holidays, leaves, terms of employment and other conditions and the statutory records rolls and registers that require to be maintained. Obviously none of the underlying processes for any of these  account for remote work.

“The Indian government has recognised this and is working on a long-term strategy to enable remote work but a structured and automated process will be essential to sustain the long term”, says Nishant Shah.

Nishant Shah is Founder and Managing Partner of Jackstien Practices and Consulting International, leaders in remote and hybrid work consulting.

“Remote work needs to be approached from the ground-up with scientific rigour that scopes in the specific organization’s industry, work-force, macro-economic standing, revenue, technology, legal and statutory environment. Piece-meal approaches just land up shifting the problems instead of solving them. That said, here at Jackstien Practices, we start evaluation of all other aspects at the same time as we start revamping processes around employment regulations and Labour Codes” says Nishant.

Thereafter come the issues with people training. Distributed teams unable to work well together has always been an issue but gets a whole new meaning with remote work. With some employees considering remote work as an excuse to lounge, be unavailable, unresponsive or uncommunicative, companies are facing severe issues in adapting their workforce to the new ways of work.

Worse, organizations that have reacted to such employee behaviour by forcing a return to the old ways of working have suddenly see a spurt in resignations as employees head in droves to other organizations and employers offering remote work options. The cost of recruitment and training spirals further, adding to the woes of the CHRO.

It is not a pleasant time for CHROs and the struggle for retention in some industries has reached epic proportions. Many in the service industry already see a huge drop in revenue on account of escalating talent costs. This is only adding to the troubles, with CHROs on the frontline bearing the brunt of these changes even as they struggle to comprehend the challenges of the new normal.

When asked about this state of affairs, “The situation is acute but unlikely to improve soon. Resolving it needs a structured plan.” says Nishant Shah. Jackstien Practices is working with several CHROs currently.

The role of the CHRO has never been an easy one to straddle, but with the challenges of the new age of work, the situation is bleak and the plight of the CHRO never worse.

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An additional source of the same conversation can be found at – https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/timesapplaud-epaper-timesicc/the+plight+of+the+chro+today-newsid-n376172782?s=a&uu=0x6270499955cfaa9b&ss=wsp

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