Seasoned IT Executive Bats For Mandatory Work-From-Office On Monday. Internet Disagrees

Nagaraj MC, the chief quality officer of an IT company, took to LinkedIn to condemn the practice of taking a leave or working from home on Monday.

Nagaraj stated that he believed that the employees' "energy levels" would be lower after coming to work on Tuesday after having spent Monday at home.

He also said that it may interfere with setting goals, and output quality would also be affected by this low energy due to lack of spirited communication between team members.

The IT industry veteran also claimed that the lack of in-person interactions would make teamwork suffer in quality.

"Face-to-face interactions helps in building trust, sharing updates to action items in workbasket and taking problem solving approach when issues surface," Nagaraj wrote.

He concluded by suggesting that team leaders should declare Monday to be a day where everyone works from the office.

"There is no doubt that flexible work culture helps but leaders must try proposing Monday as WFO for all so that, the collaboration in teams takes over finger pointing, helps in effective planning for a week and thereby achieving better weekly goals for the team," he added.

Most of the replies to the LinkedIn post were largely critical, speaking in favour of flexible working arrangements and a result-oriented workplace rather than one that stresses on physical attendance.

"In the era of AI, these views coming from CQO of a company sound regressive. It potentially shows your weakness as a leader and communicator. While there is a rise of four-day work culture in the West, Indian leaders are going in the reverse direction asking people to work more! Physical presence is not remotely linked to productivity. It's high time people embrace technology and become progressive! (sic)," one LinkedIn user said.

Others replied that making working from the office compulsory on Mondays would create resentment in employees and that major project decisions should be made in the middle of the week, that is on Wednesday.

"If the organization makes Monday mandatory for WFO, this will further cause resentment among the employees. This will further reduce their productivity. Same goes for Friday as well. So, any of the major project decisions or in case of Agile projects, the ceremonies should happen midweek i.e. on Wednesday and if the review and retrospective is happening on Wednesday, the next sprint planning can happen on Thursday," another user commented.

Nagaraj replied to several critics, saying that they should follow practices that suit them and their workplace and that his words were suggestions and ought to be ignored if ones disagrees.