The Covid-19 lockdown has been in full swing for over a month now and for most knowledge workers, working from home (WFH) has no doubt become a way of life. In fact, a number of employees at a popular IT/software BPO told me that they “definitely feel 10 times more productive and energetic throughout the day without the hassle of commuting and office distractions”. What does this mean for the average white-collar worker? Let’s look at some monthly numbers for a manager-grade employee earning a salary above Rs. 150,000:
•Travel time of approximately 45 hours saved
•Transport cost of Rs. 20,000 saved in fuel/paid transport (according to my estimates)
•Car lease of Rs. 40,000 saved, if they decide to get rid of that car rotting in their garage
•Vehicle maintenance costs minimal due to limited usage
•Office clothes and related laundry are not required
•Meaningless chit-chat meetings are avoided resulting in 25-plus hours saved
•Risk of motor vehicle-related accidents mitigated
•Risk of exposure to polluted air mitigated
And the list can go on and on.
A deeper study of the working culture helps us identify the two main aspects of the working life:
1. Going to work
2. Doing work
A simple 80/20 Pareto Analysis observes that over 80% of workplace productivity lies in the “doing work” factor. But every day, people spend roughly the same amount of time commuting and procrastinating at office, as they do actual deep work which results in lower overall productivity. For the longest time, this status quo of work has gone unchallenged. The act of going to work and actually doing work has been considered an inseparable combination.
However now, thousands of Sri Lankans have started to question the wisdom of going to an office. Thanks to a 
plethora of communications and collaboration technology connected via the internet highway, being connected to colleagues, coworkers, customers, and suppliers alike have made WFH a mostly seamless experience. Add to this the explosive popularity of on-demand service apps bursting to life and taking away the burden of household work and you have a truly compelling case for the new norms of work.
The benefits to a corporate workplace are also quite obvious, as my estimates show below:
•Combined office space upkeep cost savings up to 50%
•Employee productivity up by 25%
•Risk of workplace-related injuries mitigated resulting in insurance cost savings
•Office expansion is no longer a concern for business scaling
•Inherent sentiment of less corporate hierarchy due to lack of office space classes
•Decentralised and geographically dispersed workforce reducing risks for business continuity; otherwise inherent in a centralised office which is a single point of failure
However, transitioning from a very traditional hierarchical micromanaged culture to a liberal WFH setup does challenge the status quo and requires significant changes starting from the core of the company, like values, to operational aspects such as work management, collaboration, systems/tools, and information security.
More than just technology
McKinsey proposed a framework of four pillars for organisations transitioning to a WFH culture:
Let’s dive into these pillars in the context of a Sri Lankan blue-chip conglomerate.
The layers of management
Most conglomerates have the following operating structure – board of directors, corporate management, senior management, middle management, and the people who actually do the work.
Just like this coronavirus is novel, an organisation must also bring in novel thinking to focus on outcomes which are driven primarily by the employees at the bottom of the pyramid. These individuals can become the future leaders of the organisation, given the right attention and conducive work environment. Taking a page from the world of software engineering, agile teams are something non-tech business should definitely start looking at. While this doesn’t mean that middle and top management are irrelevant, the key takeaway must be to identify the top performers of the organisation and rearrange the teams, allowing these people to thrive and propel the growth of the organisation.
Connecting with people
As we move away from centralised office spaces, leaders must strive to connect with their respective teams regularly. While informal online meetups help build confidence and rapport, there must also be a structured approach to productive team huddles. The basics to keep in mind are to send out a calendar invite well in advance with a clear agenda and to create a post-meeting note with a clear list of objectives and key results (OKR) and owners of those OKR. This brings clarity and focus to each meeting and restricts straying away from what’s important. It also acts as an automated performance monitoring mechanism without making the teams feel like they’re being micromanaged.
Re-engineering business processes
Take for example the tedious process of a customer onboarding for a health investment plan. The front office process involves over a dozen phone calls, emails, and texts between a potential client and an agent to finalise the premium and related benefits. This then results in a number of long complicated forms with technical/legal jargon which a customer must fill out and submit. In addition to this, the customer must also provide supporting identity documents. To make things worse, most providers still lack seamless online digital payment mechanisms with EMI (equated monthly instalment) facilities. There is also a lengthy follow-up and co-ordination process between agents and the back office for matters like underwriting. All of these only lead to a bad customer experience and high potential for deal loss.
The modern customer’s requirement is simple; open an app while staying at home, submit information with a few clicks, weigh the proposal benefits against the cost, accept the proposal, and make the payment using a card or digital wallet; all via a mobile phone. In this insurance company example, it’s obvious that in order to be customer centric, the organisation needs to review their current process of customer onboarding and bring about a technology-driven transformation to meet the needs of both the consumer and salesforce.
Selecting the right tools for the job
The enterprise software industry has a vast array of tools and technologies to empower a modern workplace. While there’s definitely a tool for every problem, the challenge for company CIOs is to navigate the offerings to find the best fit within the organisation’s appetite for risk, investment, and change. A colleague who once quipped “ROI is in the eye of the beholder” later went on to adopt a popular technology ROI framework before investing in a new enterprise infrastructure platform. In the mad rush to enable employees WFH and customers buying required services from home, CIOs must follow some objective rationale when investing in any new technology. The following questions will serve as a starting point for this activity:
1. Can I measure the expected profit/savings?
2. Is such profit achievable?
3. Will the benefits of this IT project implementation be visible in more than one area of the business?
A case study at Dell Computers shows that providing access to online tools and collaboration platforms is only half of the equation. Trust, accountability, and results must be thoroughly baked into the company’s culture whether individuals work in the office or not.
A humble request to Sri Lanka’s corporate leaders and human resource managers is to please refrain from jumping the gun and confusing the employees with extensive new policies, complex tools, and remote micromanagement. This is as good as shooting yourself in the foot as you begin this death race against the economic meltdown that is Covid-19. Be true to your company slogan and values and ask yourself this two-part question: Is there trust between your corporate leadership and do your people trust each other? If the trust isn’t there, fix that first.
Tharaka De Alwis is the Chief Information Officer of Global Rubber Industries Ltd. Before that, he was an Asst. VP at Nations Trust Bank PLC, heading the technology division of its flagship FinTech brand FriMi.
plethora of communications and collaboration technology connected via the internet highway, being connected to colleagues, coworkers, customers, and suppliers alike have made WFH a mostly seamless experience. Add to this the explosive popularity of on-demand service apps bursting to life and taking away the burden of household work and you have a truly compelling case for the new norms of work.
The benefits to a corporate workplace are also quite obvious, as my estimates show below:
•Combined office space upkeep cost savings up to 50%
•Employee productivity up by 25%
•Risk of workplace-related injuries mitigated resulting in insurance cost savings
•Office expansion is no longer a concern for business scaling
•Inherent sentiment of less corporate hierarchy due to lack of office space classes
•Decentralised and geographically dispersed workforce reducing risks for business continuity; otherwise inherent in a centralised office which is a single point of failure
However, transitioning from a very traditional hierarchical micromanaged culture to a liberal WFH setup does challenge the status quo and requires significant changes starting from the core of the company, like values, to operational aspects such as work management, collaboration, systems/tools, and information security.
More than just technology
McKinsey proposed a framework of four pillars for organisations transitioning to a WFH culture:
Let’s dive into these pillars in the context of a Sri Lankan blue-chip conglomerate.
The layers of management
Most conglomerates have the following operating structure – board of directors, corporate management, senior management, middle management, and the people who actually do the work.
Just like this coronavirus is novel, an organisation must also bring in novel thinking to focus on outcomes which are driven primarily by the employees at the bottom of the pyramid. These individuals can become the future leaders of the organisation, given the right attention and conducive work environment. Taking a page from the world of software engineering, agile teams are something non-tech business should definitely start looking at. While this doesn’t mean that middle and top management are irrelevant, the key takeaway must be to identify the top performers of the organisation and rearrange the teams, allowing these people to thrive and propel the growth of the organisation.
Connecting with people
As we move away from centralised office spaces, leaders must strive to connect with their respective teams regularly. While informal online meetups help build confidence and rapport, there must also be a structured approach to productive team huddles. The basics to keep in mind are to send out a calendar invite well in advance with a clear agenda and to create a post-meeting note with a clear list of objectives and key results (OKR) and owners of those OKR. This brings clarity and focus to each meeting and restricts straying away from what’s important. It also acts as an automated performance monitoring mechanism without making the teams feel like they’re being micromanaged.
Re-engineering business processes
Take for example the tedious process of a customer onboarding for a health investment plan. The front office process involves over a dozen phone calls, emails, and texts between a potential client and an agent to finalise the premium and related benefits. This then results in a number of long complicated forms with technical/legal jargon which a customer must fill out and submit. In addition to this, the customer must also provide supporting identity documents. To make things worse, most providers still lack seamless online digital payment mechanisms with EMI (equated monthly instalment) facilities. There is also a lengthy follow-up and co-ordination process between agents and the back office for matters like underwriting. All of these only lead to a bad customer experience and high potential for deal loss.
The modern customer’s requirement is simple; open an app while staying at home, submit information with a few clicks, weigh the proposal benefits against the cost, accept the proposal, and make the payment using a card or digital wallet; all via a mobile phone. In this insurance company example, it’s obvious that in order to be customer centric, the organisation needs to review their current process of customer onboarding and bring about a technology-driven transformation to meet the needs of both the consumer and salesforce.
Selecting the right tools for the job
The enterprise software industry has a vast array of tools and technologies to empower a modern workplace. While there’s definitely a tool for every problem, the challenge for company CIOs is to navigate the offerings to find the best fit within the organisation’s appetite for risk, investment, and change. A colleague who once quipped “ROI is in the eye of the beholder” later went on to adopt a popular technology ROI framework before investing in a new enterprise infrastructure platform. In the mad rush to enable employees WFH and customers buying required services from home, CIOs must follow some objective rationale when investing in any new technology. The following questions will serve as a starting point for this activity:
1. Can I measure the expected profit/savings?
2. Is such profit achievable?
3. Will the benefits of this IT project implementation be visible in more than one area of the business?
A case study at Dell Computers shows that providing access to online tools and collaboration platforms is only half of the equation. Trust, accountability, and results must be thoroughly baked into the company’s culture whether individuals work in the office or not.
A humble request to Sri Lanka’s corporate leaders and human resource managers is to please refrain from jumping the gun and confusing the employees with extensive new policies, complex tools, and remote micromanagement. This is as good as shooting yourself in the foot as you begin this death race against the economic meltdown that is Covid-19. Be true to your company slogan and values and ask yourself this two-part question: Is there trust between your corporate leadership and do your people trust each other? If the trust isn’t there, fix that first.
Tharaka De Alwis is the Chief Information Officer of Global Rubber Industries Ltd. Before that, he was an Asst. VP at Nations Trust Bank PLC, heading the technology division of its flagship FinTech brand FriMi.