The inventions and advancements were certain to make work faster, remote, and more boundless – but the Covid-19 pandemic simply accelerated the adoption of the modern way of working.

While remote work and hybrid work was the key development driven by technology, the now celebrated aspects of not just remote work but also the new consciousness around work seemed bound to happen. The Covid-19 pandemic simply left the world with no option but to come to terms with a revised work and lifestyle more urgently. Risk-managed well for the hasty-switch made in the pandemic, it is hard to argue against Hybrid or remote work.

Let us now examine each aspect separately.

Hybrid Work and Remote Work

As discussed in the previous blogs, remote work is not a new phenomenon.

IBM was, in many ways, one of the pioneers in designing a remote work strategy and letting 5 employees work remotely in 1979, as a part of an experiment.

By 1987, 1.5 million Americans were telecommuting.

Later, Governments made it mandatory for companies to allow remote work for employees who were ‘eligible.’

Yes, the number of people working remotely was never huge, but it was a cause many people were championing for a long time.

For instance, people with disabilities have been requesting remote work for decades.

Work-Life Balance

Many factory workers in the United States had 18-hour-long shifts, six days a week. While some people certainly struggled, others looked down upon the ones that didn’t contribute as much.

In 1817, Robert Owens, an industrialist, was the first person to introduce and popularize the approach of “eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”

It took a while for everyone to adopt this model, even in the face of mounting pressure from labour organizers.

Later, in 1920, Henry Ford made the ‘9 to 5’ workday a mainstream concept.

But come 2000 and the digitization that the years that followed accompanied, certain ‘jobs’ and ‘gigs’ emerged that didn’t require a strict 8-hour productivity day.

For instance, bloggers, Youtubers, cameramen, videographers, and freelancers.

Soon enough, people began to question the inflexibility that office jobs came with.

A direct response to these things was also companies coming up with plans to allow recreation time (think smoke breaks, snooker breaks) during a regular work day.

But when the pandemic pushed everyone to begin working from home, flexibility very quickly became something that workers around the world always deserved but got to experience only now.

This is also why remote work is eventually evolving into hybrid work – flexibility has become a major prerequisite to employee productivity, efficiency and well-being. A full return to office is not on the cards.

Better Compensation

To protect workers during the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

By 1956, the U.S. Congress raised the minimum wage many times.

But it wasn’t enough.

Over the years that followed, workers began investing in organized efforts towards pushing the Government to raise the minimum wage.

Protests for the same began early on. It was in 2015 that the “Fight for $15” started as a Fast Food Forward Movement and quickly became a national labour movement.

The pandemic, however, gave more momentum to such protests.

It was as recent as 2021 that workers rallied for pushing the Government to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour.

In 2022, from Swiggy workers in India to Starbucks workers in the United States – everyone protested for increased monthly payments and better working conditions.

2022 also saw a surge in union activity, in many sectors. Employees went on strikes and walkouts in large numbers. Teachers, nurses, doctors, railway workers, and baristas demonstrated work stoppages. Employees and workers in companies like Amazon and Apple filed thousands of petitions to form unions.

Remote and Hybrid work along-with balance and fair compensation seem to be a part of a set of long-term employee asks intensified by the pandemic.

While fair compensation is likely to remain contentious for the long-term, the future of work with remote and hybrid work, and its implication on work-life seem set in the consciousness. The recession following the pandemic has seem businesses adapt to this future. Not just for the employee benefit but also because of the massive boost to their bottom-line by expenditure saved from the second biggest expenditure item – premises and maintenance.

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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.

<unquote>

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<quote>

A month ago, Meesho, an Indian e-commerce firm backed by SoftBank and Facebook announced a permanent work from anywhere policy for all employees.

Now, Jackstien Practices, the management consulting firm established by former banker Nishant Shah, has announced that it will be shifting to a permanently remote model of work. Operating in Hybrid Model since inception, the firm claims that the productivity observed over such a long period of working with many full-time remote employees has been conclusive evidence for them internally.

Recently, Marico also introduced a Hybrid Work framework for all employees, joining the august rank of companies like Apple, Citibank, Intel and UBS.

In an age where “work from anywhere” is the clarion call against the babu-culture, further announcements of this nature are expected. This follows a global trend that is expected to continue well into the next 8-10 years.

GitLab is an all-remote software company valued at 11 Billion that went public last year in the United States.

Co-incidentally, Jackstien Practices are award-winning specialists in remote and hybrid work transitions.

The new normal, the new equation, the new world or the new ways of working; whatever way in which one refers to it, it is clear that long-held beliefs about virtual work are being shed for good.

Challenges remain, no doubt. However, with an increasing number of such announcements, the future seems clear.

Employers are still struggling to come to grips with this change. Process-oriented businesses, especially in the BFSI sector and the outsourced services space need to contend with a myriad of assessments, risks and operational challenges.

While a Hybrid model seems like an obvious choice for these businesses, it is proving rather difficult to assess, manage and think through.

HR heads, department heads, Chief Operating Officers and even CEOs are having to contend with questions that have a significant long-term impact without established metrics on hand to guide these decisions. There is also a risk that in addition to facilitating its employees and managing costs, CXOs need to hard-code protection for the interests of all its customers, clients, shareholders and vendors.

Remote and hybrid working environments are also lifestyles. Consider (i) the Great Resignation is quite strongly associated with return to the office plans (ii) the costs of employee replacement and hire are spiralling and (iii) businesses are realising benefits to a boosted bottom line from what now appears to be unnecessary expenditure on real estate that provides little in return.

At the same time, businesses need to ensure a solid footing in this rarified field of study. Transition requires a cross-specialised understanding of processes, technology, risk interaction, flow structure, policy-map and forward vision, all of which inform each other in a complex interplay. In hindsight, the need for new consultants for the new normal seems obvious.

Be that as it may, the relentless and inexorable march towards remote working lifestyles will only continue, reshaping much of what we know around us today.

https://newswireindia.in/index.php/2022/03/14/the-relentless-march-of-hybrid-and-remote-ways-of-working-in-india/

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Background

No great leap of progress has ever arrived exclusively as a benefit.

Every day, more and more benefits or Remote & Hybrid Work are discovered even as more and more problems cropped up.

Remote and Hybrid Work have upended decades of ingrained practices, processes and structures that were suddenly ill-equipped to deal with the new world.

Forward looking companies that recognized the future of work have indeed tried to resolve these problems. However, to resolve a problem, one needs the expertise to identify the root cause.

Why is Root Cause Analysis So Difficult?

Some organizations consider Remote and Hybrid Work as an HR issue, some a Technology issue, others an Administrative issue and yet others considered it a Real Estate issue.

Remote Work and Hybrid work is all of these yet none of these. This is why Root Cause analysis proves so difficult. Because, RCA needs to have a holistic approach rather than a departmental one.

Some organizations set up multi-departmental committees but landed up suffering fractured policies with gaps and inefficiencies cropping up daily.

Work, Not Workplaces

In reality, most thought of ‘Remote’ or ‘Hybrid’ as a description for workplaces. However, it’s more than from where you work – it’s how you work. From processes to policies and everything in between.

However, this perspective is difficult to apply, especially for a departmental structure.

To be sure, the departmental structure that most businesses have evolved has served us well. Very well, in fact.

The unfortunate truth, however, is that in this instance, the departmental structure simply does not allow for cohesive thinking. The departmental structure is, by design, intended to be segmented by expertise.

What Are The Other Alternatives?

There is also another (bad) alternative; a new department can be created by hiring new people resources with relevant skills.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many (if any) such resources out there; we know because we searched long and hard before deciding to invest intense time, effort and resources into developing this expertise.

But for the sake of argument, let us assume that such talent is available.

The problem is that the transition to remote or hybrid work is a one-time activity (if done right). As such, these theoretical new hires may not be able to continue to contribute much value post transition, nor would they see a path to self-growth thereafter.

Furthermore, there is an ever-increasing set of skills required to manage this transition and it is hard to imagine a business continuing to hire for every new such skill-set (think of incremental skill requirements for labour law, professional licensing, virtualisation, data privacy or international work visa requirements).

So What Should You Do?

Just as a well-designed remote work transition creates massive incremental value for shareholders, a badly designed one can be counter-productive and prove fatal.

But the departmental structure doesn’t work and the ‘hire-and-hope’ strategy is not only risky but will be very likely ineffective and expensive.

At the same time, transitioning well is a must for organizations. If organizations do not invest in a well-designed structure on their own terms now, then they will be forced to do so later at great cost and having lost value and opportunities.

So how do organizations deal with this conundrum?

Organizations must therefore look into hiring a remote or hybrid work expert to guide this critical transition and connect it all;  framework design, implementation management, legal risks, regulatory aspects, process virtualization/ automation, people and cultural adaptation, policies and governance.

This article continues the series of articles outlining the thoughts that occurred to us in a tete-a-tete with Financial Express, (see media article here). The original article aimed to bust the myth that a transition to remote or hybrid work can be managed internally.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(s)

A senior banker from the complex global markets space, Mr. Nishant Shah has worked for more than two decades across Citibank, Standard Chartered and JPMorgan Chase before taking over as our Managing Partner. Passionate with word and pen about finance, technology, macro-economics and future trends, he is a Chartered Accountant by education and the winner of various prestigious awards during his career, including the ‘India Awards for Excellence’.

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect views, thoughts, opinions, official policy or position of the author’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

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