The article can be found at https://www.outlookindia.com/outlook-spotlight/-organizations-are-people-too-says-jackstien-practices-nishant-shah-on-hybrid-work-news-203471 and is replicated below for easy reference.

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When Raina (name changed) requested to combine her personal leave with an off-site work arrangement at work, little did she know that the whole Hybrid Workspace program was soon to reach a tipping point. 

Here’s what happened; several similar requests had come in. The supervisors agreed to grant only some of these requests and staggered work across branches or across days to meet quarter end pressures. However, when the things quickly took a turn for the worse during the quarter end. Some of their offices creaked under the pressure of the influx of people demanding resources while other offices lay unused and empty, gathering dust and expenditure. Missed deadlines, angry clientele, blame-games and finger-pointing erupted and escalated to one resignation and one dismissal. The company had little choice but to suspend the Hybrid Work program till they could figure out how to avoid recurrences like these.

While the world has settled in to agree that Hybrid Work is the happy median, the devil, as the saying goes, is always in the details. This is evidenced plentifully by the debates raging across every channel. 

Organizations rightly worry about risk and sustainability but at the same time, don’t want to lose the benefits Hybrid Work provides. The Hybrid Work idea has universal appeal. While there are many superficial products in the market, they are largely limited to seat-reservations or co-ordination meant to serve the flexibility needs of the employees.  Real tools to help organizations protect their interests at the same time are non-existent.

Uncharted Waters
As questions and debates rage on, we discussed with Nishant Shah, Managing Partner of Jackstien Practices and Consulting International what it takes to create and sustain a Hybrid workspace. 

The problem, says Nishant Shah, is that when one discusses Hybrid work, they tend to look only at people’s needs and ignore the organization’s needs. Organizations have their own priorities, fears and risks just like people; they need to protect the interests and address the fears of its management, owners, shareholders, regulators, creditors and other employees. “In that sense, organizations are people too” smiles Nishant. 

At The Helm
Nishant Shah a former banker, advocates strongly in favour of Hybrid Work as the Future of Work. He ought to know. Jackstien Practices are a premier transition management firm but not just any transition firm; they focus on transitioning organizations to the future of work with remote and hybrid work as the focal points of their transformation expertise for distributed teams and distributed infrastructure. 

“Imagine this in your mind; the goal is to reach a state where an organization operates in a productive, sustainable and profitable Hybrid Work infrastructure” says Nishant Shah. He continues “Now imagine that the bike that takes you there runs on the two primary wheels of ‘technology’ and ‘people’ with an engine intricately designed of several complicated parts… parts consisting of frameworks like expense and asset management, productivity management, statutory, legal and regulatory management, policy, tax management, operating risk management and sustainability initiatives. We transform your organization into this vehicle so you can reach the Hybrid-work goal.”

After five years in Citibank, Nishant moved to Standard Chartered in 2006 and thereafter to JPMorgan Chase Bank. Thirteen years later, in 2020, he moved out of his role as Executive Director and India Head of Operating Risk at JPMorgan Chase India and founded Jackstien Practices & Consulting International. The impact of the firm’s unique specialisation gained them the highly coveted Indian Achievers Award less than two years later. A futurist, Nishant says his inspiration to found the firm came from “the joy of aligning hundreds of moving parts; (because) I loved resolving issues on behalf of two groups who wanted what they wanted irrespective of the other side’s point of view.”

Anchoring the Hybrid Workspace
Unfortunately, a system to design, manage, or set the parameters to fruitfully anchor a Hybrid workspace didn’t exist. The light touch systems that do exist have not found favour, presumably because they are rather lop-sided and focus only on user convenience instead of also ensuring the best interest of the employer organizations. “Complexities underlying such system add up at the ground-level because such systems need to be reactive to change and do so in a controlled manner” feels Nishant. 

Partner-Ship
Muzammil Patel is the Managing Partner of Acies Consulting LLP, an award-winning firm that focuses on cutting edge technology. Muzammil has himself spent thirteen years in Deloitte and Ernst and Young, two of the Big Four firms where he worked as a Management Consultant. As a senior Management Consultant in Deloitte, Muzammil had first-hand experience in risk-managing the many moving parts that constitute large organizations.

Nishant and Muzammil combined expertise of their respective organizations to incorporate Jonosfero International LLP, a Joint Venture between these two new-age firms. With several key products in the pipeline, the first mountain Jonosfero International plans to scale is a big one; developing a system to create and sustainably manage Hybrid Workspaces from an organization’s viewpoint.

Undock and Sail-Forth?
Leaving the restrictive shores of on-premise work requires the right tools before undocking. Nishant feels Jonosfero International has what it takes to create just such a technology tool, code-named work.IS. Only time will tell whether work.IS, which Nishant says stands for “Work In-Situ”, lives up to its promise. The pedigree is certainly promising.

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The post Outlook India – 20.Jun.2022 appeared first on Jackstien Practices, India.

The coverage can be found on https://theindiasaga.com/saga-corner/the-new-struggle/ and is replicated below for reference.

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The world seems to have settled in to agree that Hybrid is the best form of Remote Work. That’s the New Normal.

However, many differences persist in the approach. These differences are visible in the empty offices today. And that is the New Struggle.

From all employers to all employees having different ideas years ago, we have now reached a point today where the world has come to grips with what Remote and Hybrid work is.

Nishant Shah, former banker and Managing Partner of Jackstien Practices, has been speaking publicly about the key distinctions between work vs workplace in the context of Remote or Hybrid work. His posts on the popular social media platform LinkedIn have garnered much attention as the world continues to evolve a mid-ground between what organizations and its people want. 

With attrition rates at all-time highs, seemingly linked to corporate’s plans towards return to office premises, the push and pull grows stronger. The more one chases ‘normalization,’ the further it seems to feel.

There is a gap, often characterized as a generational gap, with some yearning for a return to what they perceived as the ‘good old days’ It is now apparent that those days are never coming back, one more aspect of the world irrevocably changed by the pandemic. In fact, with the world now realizing the stand-alone value of remote work outside of the context of the pandemic, the very definition of ‘gooddays’ has changed, and these models will only grow.

Nishant’s thoughts in this direction started during his days in Standard Chartered way back in 2006. Before moving to Standard Chartered, Nishant had spent six years across three departments in four separate locations in Citibank, where, according to him, cross-learning across departments was an ingrained way of life. As Core Banking Systems rolled out, Nishant says that he started “feeling a lack of value in moving geographies even as I saw the level of resources required to support this geographical spread”.

However, even as the years progressed, remote and hybrid work remained the domain of a few niche international IT firms. This, even as metro-dwellers continued to suffer the stresses of commute living in cities where home ownership was largely becoming a mere pipedream for the newer generation. As history will no-doubt show, the pandemic accelerated the changes that took years to materialize in the eCommerce space.

Moving to JPMorgan in 2007 and rising to Head of Operating Risk amidst internationally emerging financial and operational trends, Nishant Shah says that “the benefits, as well as the problems and complexities of such infrastructures, became a field of study for me”.

Questions remain on what the ideal model of work is, how everything should fit together, how and which model to adopt and how to re-adapt staff. More questions arise as businesses struggle with these questions at an organization-wide level. 

The struggle, as they say, is real. The older generation prefers to go back to established ways even at the increased costs of hundreds of millions but face dissent from the younger generation who are the backbone in the IT, ITES and BFSI sectors. We can see these struggles playing out in real-time as behemoths like TCS and Infosys try to combat record attrition rates as high as 27%. We can see these struggles play out in empty offices.

It is no wonder that firms like Jackstien Practices now specialize in consulting on all things remote and hybrid work. From technical and technological, operational risks to costs-balancing. 

Basic folksy tips about giving people freedom and flexibility can only go so far. To help organizations effectively transition, there is a need for strong technical assessment and advice to maintain smooth operational productivity. After all, organizations need to protect all their stakeholders even as they struggle to adapt to the accelerating pace of change.

The new normal brings with it a new struggle. The difference this time around is that the new struggle, unlike those in the past, is for improvement rather than mere survival.

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The post Our Thoughts On ‘The New Normal’ covered by The India Saga appeared first on Jackstien Practices, India.

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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 post Mid-Day Covers Jackstien Practices in a Discussion About The Consulting Conundrum appeared first on Jackstien Practices, India.

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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

The post The Plight of the CHRO Today – The Times News Discusses, featuring Jackstien Practices. appeared first on Jackstien Practices, India.

The coverage can be found on https://www.apnlive.com/a-fully-remote-environment-is-technologically-easy-says-jackstien-practices-nishant-shah/ and is replicated below for reference.

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Following a spate of announcements over the last few months, it is now clear that companies are doubling down on the new future of work. 

While most have opted for a Hybrid environment, some have transitioned to a fully remote environment. Recently, Meesho (the Indian origin e-comm backed by the likes of SoftBank) announced going fully remote. Giants like Facebook now have permanent work from anywhere policies. 

Jackstien Practices, who were recently awarded the Indian Achievers Award for 2021-22 are specialists in remote and hybrid work transitions and have themselves recently moved to a fully remote model. We asked Nishant Shah, former banker and the founder of Jackstien Practices, about the challenges of transitioning to a fully remote profile. 

A fully remote environment is technologically easy”

–says Nishant Shah

“While technology is essential, it is plentifully available. At the same time, technology is just the start and doesn’t add much value without a surrounding architecture that supports remote work – people, structure, policies, productivity management, legal and statutory pieces, structure, cost management, sustainability, design and much more”

–continues Nishant.

“In that sense, remote work is like a 10000 piece puzzle. Both can be easily procured at a price but it’s very difficult to convert into a cohesive big-picture. Further, the fact that transitions need to be time-bound but phased but have no rules or templates to follow and it is even harder. There is always an element of art involved in any major transition but we separate the science and art elements of every transition and address them individually”

–says Nishant.

Yet, companies have to tread the path. Simply put, there seems little choice. Hindustan Coca-Cola, Marico, Apple, UBS, Citi, Intel, AT&T, Spotify and TCS are but a few names of the long list of companies jumping aboard this train, spurred by even greater numbers jumping onto the ‘Great Resignation’ train and the burn-out amongst the younger generation of workers.

GitLab’s valuation at 11 Billion last year in its IPO in the United States underscored how employees and shareholders equally value this trend. For the uninitiated, GitLab is a fully remote company.

For more complex and regulated businesses, the Hybrid work model is the best alternative but comes with an even greater set of challenges, key being the ideal balance of cost and freedom to ensure that the organisation maintains its operations at peak performance. No doubt, a host of secondary but no less important issues follow. Jackstien Practices claim to have developed a whole field of study in the area of Hybrid Work and the depth of detail left us impressed. 

Creaking infrastructures, spiralling inflation, disillusionment with the urban lifestyle, pollution,  real-estate prices, persistent uncertainty, technological alternatives, the great resignation (refuelled by companies’ return to office plans), climate goals and of course, the pandemic have come together to create the perfect storm. 

It’s high time, we say.

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The post Fully Remote Work is Technologically Easy – A discussion with APN Live on the importance of an architectural structure for Remote Work. appeared first on Jackstien Practices, India.