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Embracing flexibility with work: A new era for India's workforce
Summary
Flexible work options empower employees, stimulate local economies and drive inclusive growth in smaller towns
What is common between the Steel Authority of India (SAIL), a steel behemoth, and Infosys, the iconic IT services company? They are as different as chalk and cheese, but, interestingly, both are getting more flexible about their workplace policies and, in the process, paving the way to explore new work models for organisations.
In May, SAIL announced the Work from Other than Workplace (WoW) policy. Under this policy, employees could choose to work from a place other than their normal office/base location. Generally, we don’t expect such flexibility from a typical public sector company.
On the other hand, in June, Infosys was in the news, as it announced a series of financial incentives to its employees to move to Hubbali, the well-known tier 2 town in Karnataka. This was a conscious push towards encouraging work from other than Bengaluru.
Both these seemingly unrelated policy events are signalling a new future for how India Inc. has been looking at work and workplaces. In fact, behind all the return-to-office mandates grabbing media headlines periodically, there is fine print about how the companies are asking people to come to the office only for a few days. Much of the knowledge sector work globally has already moved to hybrid work, an arrangement that legitimises remote work and presents an acceptable mechanism for our needs to socialise in offices, periodically.
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A recent study by recruitment agency CIEL HR showed that six out of 10 technology companies have adopted hybrid work, with employees going to the office for only a few days a week.
The covid pandemic gave us a first-hand experience of how work can be freed from the rigidities of time and place and yet remain productive. Contrary to the fears propagated by some stuck-in-the-past critics of remote work, a recent study published in the journal Nature, by Stanford economist Nick Bloom and his co-authors Ruobing Han and James Liang, found that “hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance, and improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by one-third." Remote or hybrid work are just two small dimensions of the future of work, though. By framing the issue as office versus home, we are missing out on the big message of our times: Flexibility.
As the future of work evolves, flexibility will drive many new work options: Compressed work weeks, gig work, results-based work contracts, personalised job designs, and a new freedom of working from anywhere, any time. The world of work will move from mandates to choices—of course, within guard rails.
Both organisations and employees are recognising the desirability and inevitability of flexibility. Our aspirations to be a developed country cannot be met in full measure if our vast human capital is not unleashed.
As choices expand and strait-jacketed jobs are redesigned in the shape of flexible work options, Bharat will immensely benefit. By adopting the power of technology and distributed/remote work models, we can finally take jobs to people instead of forcing people to migrate to big cities to earn a livelihood. Flexible jobs, firms and employment policies will have several knock-on benefits, which we must notice and push for.
First, big cities will stop choking if the ceaseless migration from rural towns stops. Second, remote work offers will make many more jobs accessible to rural talent and create more inclusive employment opportunities in small towns. Third, with the incomes of small town people increasing, local economies will grow much faster. With small towns growing and retaining skilled people, more companies will set up their branch/satellite offices in those hitherto neglected locations, creating a virtuous spiral for rural economies and talent.
Flexible work options will transform the workplace culture as well. Much of the current command-control styles that micro-manage and stifle employees will change, as more managers see the value of freedom, empowerment, self-direction and autonomy.
As we enter our 78th year of independence, it is time to take stock of markers of freedom beyond those political and economic in nature. Freedom at work fuelled by flexible work options is as important as any other freedom. The workplace is changing rapidly and presenting us with new technologies, processes and work models. Organisations must shed some of their industrial-era mindsets and quickly and efficiently seize the new opportunities that the future is presenting.
Chandrasekhar Sripada is clinical professor of organisational behaviour at the Indian School of Business. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Shaping The Future Of Work: Building Flexible Work Options And Unleashing The Human Capital Of Bharat (Penguin Random House ).
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