The Work From Home Variable Is Yet To Find A Sweet Spot

"For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, he writes – not that you won or lost – But HOW you played the Game."

If Indian IT majors were to rewrite this, they would alter it to WHERE you played the game. After promising permanent work from home, most IT majors have been altering their policies and forcing adamant employees to come back — for over a year now. As warnings failed to yield results, they are opting for tactics like linking variable pay payout to attendance.

“A few companies are attempting to link appraisals with attendance. And some others are mandating the employees to either come to office or quit," tells Hormazd Mistry, founder of Sarosh Consulting.

Companies claim that WFH is costing them productivity, and that new employees, particularly onboarded during the pandemic — are missing out on workplace experiences.

"There are things that cannot be taught and observed and better done in a collective manner while co-existing in a workplace," N Ganapathy Subramaniam, chief operating officer of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., said last October at a press conference, explaining why they are asking employees to come back to work to internalise the TCS way. Infosys Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. are pushing for hybrid working where the teams meet occasionally.

Mistry surmises that around 80% of the IT workforce is being offered some kind of hybrid work, while around 20% are currently under complete remote working. Others are being asked to come to offices in some form or another. Smaller and mid-sized companies, however, are allowing flexibility due to the cost savings they bring. 

Going Back On Their Word 

Tech employees, however, have a different story to tell. They say that the back-to-office mandates are fraught with logistical roadblocks, which are not being smoothened.

"There is a lot of chaos for those of us who want to attend offices. Seats are not being assigned and we are having to work out of canteens and break rooms. Our attendance is being tracked via a location app," a tech employee based out of Mumbai said.

Companies going back on their word after promising work from home is also leaving a bitter taste in the mouth. “My offer letter says that it allows me to work from home. Though my company is not threatening me, it's asking us to attend offices to meet the clients. This is happening especially for those of us who are working from BFSI projects," tells another employee of a top-tier IT company.

 The Price Of Flexibility 

As per Varda Pendse, an HR strategist and coach, IT companies' stance is their way of sending a message. "They are basically saying – if you want to work from home, great. But there is a price to pay. Not just tech companies, I also know of law firms which are doing the same," she adds.

Shabbir Merchant, the founder of Valulead Consulting, said that the tough posturing by tech companies is a matter of the current market cycle. "Currently there is an oversupply and organisations have higher power. This cycle changes every five years," he adds.

Irrespective of the cause, the effect it has had on employees hasn't been positive. Most people choosing WFH experienced a lot of material as well as non-material gains from working from home and not finding it easy to give up.

"If you see, WFH is basically work-from-anywhere, and many tech employees shifted to native places and are saving on rent and transportation. Also, WFH allows for easy switching off, wherein coming to office would mandate some amount of later hours," Pendse says.

When companies altered their WFH policies, they were expecting to see much more enthusiasm from employees to come back to office. That theory has proven wrong too, apart from their pandemic-time assumption that WFH can be permanently implemented.

Un-opening The Pandora's Box 

Tech companies have opened Pandora's Box, and now finding it hard to bring them back to how things were. Few HR experts, however, blame only the companies for what they term as a "fiasco".

“Even employees have to be blamed for the failure of WFH. Many of them have taken undue advantage of WFH," says Mistry. Apart from shirking and skipping work, many of them have been using office hours for personal work. More importantly, a few have been moonlighting and taking up extra projects as side hustles during and right after the pandemic period.

Attempts by organisations to offer hybrid options and flexibility has also landed them in a different kind of trouble. Many of them adopted 'coffee badging', where they are 'seen' at the workplace — affecting productivity even further. More so, companies are having to monitor employee presence of deliverables with a keener eye in such situations — affecting productivity even further.

Both soft and hard stances taken up by organisations aren't yielding desired results either in terms of attendance or team building or productivity as desired, say HR experts. The way forward is to come up with a middle path where employees are given enough incentives to come back to work.

"They need to be convinced that work can get done better as a social process. And that it can create the right kind of networks, visibility, a better understanding of business dynamics and the feel of a workplace. Mentoring can be done better face to face and that should be conveyed and practised and must not just be lip service," says Merchant.

Pendse also feels that WFH as an option must be given and employees should be let to choose to come to work. Both WFH and BTO dynamics need to alter to a new normal, and managers have to put in an effort to manage them better in both instances. Employees too need to aim for career progression, which can be better achieved while working with a team.

“In WFH, employees sit at home and finish their tasks. Being in an office will give a real-time feel of things happening as opposed to sitting at home and doing just what you're supposed to do," says Mistry.

Both WFH as well as plans to cancel them are in a state of infancy – neither of them is barely five years old. HR experts say that a sense of maturity will soon come in to both employees and employers alike to work out a middle path that works best for everyone.

Katya Naidu is a senior business journalist who writes about equity markets, startups, energy, infrastructure, real estate and healthcare.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NDTV Profit or its editorial team.