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Before I start, a fair disclaimer. These thoughts are mine and mine alone from the perspective of the experiences gathered. It does not reflect the policy or road map of the organization for either work from home or office.
This pandemic has made people realize that flexibility is not difficult. My initial years in Workforce, I was shocked to see 80-90% of my counterparts in the US opting for flexible shift. Their shifts ranged from 4*10 to 5*8 to 6*6.6. That was not all, 14 years ago, laptop and blackberry issued by organization was status symbol. They had laptops to work (as I did) and then I found, they were working 1-2 days from home. I could not dream of this, (except in dire emergency, for a day or two). And strangely enough while I was creating the staffing plans with all these flexibilities for the US teams, the same was not available for India team.
I could still rationalize the customer facing teams or voice process which needed very stable infrastructure for good quality of the calls. I could not rationalize it for the back-office process which did not need a specific time or location. One of the logics that was given at that time was data security. Few of the application should not be opened outside the office space.
Then 2020 happened. All the restriction were out of the window. Business continued with a new method which embraced flexibility. If it could happen in 2020, why was the industry reluctant to use it earlier? I guess, we all know the answer somewhere, but we cannot admit it.
However, for someone who manages the workforce, planning, staffing, and scheduling, flexibility has its own merits and requires specialized handling. The biggest balancing is and will always be business requirement with the employee expectations. The number of shifts increases, also the week off requests and just throw in other challenges like power cut, internet outage, noisy background, and emergencies at home, which a person cannot get away with. In an ideal world, the family members understand the person is working and should not be disturbed. The catch word is ideal world. It also made me realize that not everybody could stick to their workplace at home and follow the break regime, if even the break could be for 4 ins every 20 mins. It just cannot happen with everyone.
In all this, what is my take. What would be my ideal solution be?
A hybrid model – because as much as flexibility is needed a bit of face time with other teams are required to build in the culture of comraderies, and innovation. 20% of WFO should be enough for each employee on rotation basis.
The plus side of this is organizations can operate with much lesser space, may be with just 30%-50% of the seats that they needed in past as per the TAT and call volume. It is a huge cost save, keeps the team bonded as people would look forward to going to office those special days, investing the travel time in self-development or balancing work-and life.
(See, I did it again! In one stroke, I have offended real estate people, for whom the revenue will dip. The oil, as transportation reduces and of course the corrupt ministers, who have their interest in line with these lobbies.)
The solution as per me, is not process driven, but person and performance driven, with 4-point approach.
- Identify the base requirement of staffing level that is required to maintain the Service Level, Abn% and TAT. If the entire workforce is operating from home, build in a higher buffer for the unexpected. If it is a hybrid, the buffer reduces, and from WFO, it is minimum. That is base minimum which cannot be negotiated with. That is the line you draw.
- Have a multiple and overlapping shifts for coverage and eventualities, plus have a transparent communication with the teams on the expectation, deliverables and their needs, that helps to bring in the balance.
- A lot of people have reported increase in their efficiencies and productivity in WFH model, while some had a huge dip. Identify them and categorize them. Maybe those who showed a huge dip in their productivity in WFH model, do not have required infrastructure at home to do it or perform at the performance level needed. It makes sense to call them to work from office with higher frequency. Or let them operate out of office.
- Opt for bidding of schedules and shifts on basis of performance for the people working out of office. The only risk to this is that this shift bidding is with teams that are not mature enough. Only teams with high independence can operate in this mode. In case the team is not mature enough, then the leader can bid for their different teams under them.
It does increase the planning, but if the scenarios are well thought and all shifts and patterns well strategized, the hybrid model is the most cost & performance effective model of all, which would give employees a bit of flexibility and time to invest in themselves.
