Did you read about Zerodha going hybrid? Nithin Kamath, in one of his recent tweets supporting hybrid work, said:
“Work from home works well for support roles given the structured nature of the work. But for tech, business, and decision making teams, it has been detrimental, primarily due to the big gaps in remote communication.”
I worked from home for the past two and a half years.While I completely believe remote was the only way at that point in time, throughout the period, I have also felt disconnected from the team. Not to mention the joys of tea-times together!
Well, I still put off going to the office everyday because of the sheer impracticality of travelling everyday. The mid-way is much better, I felt.
It looks like the majority of us feel the same – hybrid work is the future.
We did a small survey – Asking people: If given a choice, what would they prefer? And the results are as below:
58% Indians preferred hybrid
31% were still rooting for work from home option
Only 11% wanted to go to the office everyday.
When we conducted the survey, we got some enthusiastic responses. One member quipped: “Work from anywhere in the world. Can you pls add this option as well.”
No wonder there is so much resistance to total WFO.
Overall, the trend is that – Employees post covid have a different definition of compensation package. They also have a component called “WLB” into it, which they subconsciously track. If the component is getting hampered too much, they think the job is asking too much out of them.
Coincidently, HRs also seem to be on the same page. From the HR lens, what matters is culture, productivity and discipline. If hybrid work can take care of that well, why not go hybrid?
When a fintech firm like zerodha can choose hybrid work, there is hardly any reason why the similar kind of job profiles should not go the hybrid way. [which basically includes majority of knowledge workers in India]
While Silicon valley start-ups have more than double remote/hybrid jobs compared to Indian start-ups [currently listed], Indian start-ups are still ahead of the curve when it comes to overall trend in India.
But, there is also an element of our Asian culture here, probably. Our larger Asian peer – Japan’s story is no different than ours. Japan is the 2nd biggest Asian economy. Employers there are strongly focused on getting employees back to office per Gartner. Indian employers too, seem to overwhelmingly prefer WFO instead of hybrid work at the moment. In fact, GCCs of foreign MNCs also seem to prefer WFO when it comes to their India offices.
On the popular job board Naukri.com, in all major segments that were “remote capable”, over 95% of recruiters preferred WFO. [Please refer to the infographic above] Only in IT and software, the percentage of new job listings that mentioned “hybrid work” came close to 5%
On the other hand, In the EU, UK & USA, hybrid work is rising. A recent Gallup study showed that half of the US workforce [in remote capable jobs] is undertaking hybrid work every quarter consistently since Sept 2022. Big names like Google, Zoom, Meta, Microsoft, Deloitte have adapted hybrid work already.
Perhaps, building an agile hybrid work model is the key for India – maybe a sort of “hybrid playbook” that suits our organisational needs.
In our case, connectivity is good, by and large. Cyber security, trust issues between managers and reportees, communication blocks were major reasons going against remote work in India.
While driven employees need no supervision, the same is not true for those who are only in the job for the payday. In that sense, we need to understand the concerns of employers. Firing is not as easy in India as in western countries.
Afterall, however we may try, we cannot have everyone pumped up with a mission all the time. This is why hybrid, & not remote work can offer a win-win option for both employees and employers if we have a good hybrid work model/s.
In a hybrid work model, managers can see their employees face to face at least once a week. It helps to streamline any blockers quickly and also ensure that laggards don’t continue to slack.
For cyber security reasons, every organisation will have to have a proper rulebook/guide on how to use tech. There is of course, no dearth of tech stack for hybrid work. The challenge is to pick a good one for the organisation’s use case.
Organisations will also have to design the workplaces accordingly and manage peak attendance patterns. Doing so can prove to be extremely cost saving from the fixed-cost perspective in a real estate hungry India.
Hybrid work has one drawback though – from an employee perspective. Those coming from smaller towns – they can’t avoid migration to metrocities in the hybrid work culture. Just to attend office for a single day/ 2-3 days they need to make all the necessary living arrangements. Rent a home, look for a cook, other househelp and so on.
Nonetheless, they would still save a lot of money [and time] by NOT travelling to the office everyday. In the era of constant upskilling, this can be a boon.
That is why the majority of employees see hybrid work as a necessary adjustment to the work culture post covid, in our ever expanding cities.
A few lucky ones who like and get permanent WFH are mostly found working for some tech start-up from silicon valley or Europe. Otherwise, more or less, the majority have mentally adapted to the new way of work – hybrid work.
That points to the obvious: employers’ and employees’ expectations about the work culture are still not aligned in India.
Employees losing out their best productive time sitting in a car/ola/metro/local train is benefitting no one. Not employers, not environment and certainly not employees.
It may be a case of the pendulum going to another extreme of WFO before it finally settles in the middle for hybrid work culture in India.
Well, it is about time for the post covid WFO exuberance (should we call it irrational?) & “return to work” calls die down. If employers need the best out of their workforce, they need to focus on the culture which supports high productivity – for their own good.
