When everything else fails, the culture helps an organisation to perform and deliver: Experts
"Career stints have shortened like never before, hiring for specific projects is already on the rise – is there any relevance for the concept of culture anymore? I am of the opinion that culture is more deeply seated in the minds of employees and their behaviours that a simple change of place of work cannot really alter it," says Anitha Kaveri, Manager - Sectors and Special Projects, IET India.
Anitha Kaveri, Manager - Sectors, and Special Projects at IET India
Abhishek Sahu
The discussion of the future of work is no more a niche topic and has rather become a global issue. Emerging technologies are disrupting the traditionally well-defined industries and the labour market. Experts say India is experiencing forces of change that are mainly driven by digital transformation, sweeping in alterations throughout the workforce, nature of jobs and operational processes of organisations.
This has only further been catalysed by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent enforcing of WFH culture has led organisations to find novel means of interaction and engagements revolutionizing how work has always been perceived.
Inability to conceptualise and build a resilient core is a major challenge
At this point, every single entity is cognisant of how different a reality we are in, than what we had planned for. And as experts put it, most businesses had a plan A, plan B, and contingency planning if something went wrong.
Speaking on the challenges induced by the pandemic, Anitha Kaveri, Manager - Sectors, and Special Projects at IET India, said, "The biggest challenges facing the industry have been the same in some sense – both then and now. We have seen many times that the closest association to the Future of Work in the minds of people is automation – and that is highly intimidating – for various reasons."
She further points out that the second kind of challenge is the inability to both conceptualise and build a resilient core - which is focused on building solutions for the future while being firmly grounded in the present. "A third challenge constantly voiced is just not knowing where to start. We are hopeful that the pandemic would serve as a great source of the push for digitisation," she said.
When everything else fails, organisation culture helps us perform and deliver
Pointing to the earlier times, when the gig economy was seeing its biggest surge, Kaveri said that a discussion had erupted in academic and corporate circles – what does the organisation culture mean anymore?
She said, "Career stints have shortened like never before, hiring for specific projects is already on the rise – is there any relevance for the concept of culture anymore? I am of the opinion that culture is more deeply seated in the minds of employees and their behaviours that a simple change of place of work cannot really alter it."
Kaveri further said that culture in an organisational context is a lot of shared beliefs and practices – sometimes even procedures and communication protocols. "I think when everything else fails, it is the organisation culture that actually helps us perform and deliver – even when we are physically separated from our teams and clients," she added.
However, she points out, our processes and ways of working were all built for a physical world and that needs to adapt and update quickly. "For example, there are enough articles in the popular business press about the overwork syndrome while working from home and added pressures of business continuity that employees are under. This is not an ideal state to be in."
"In addition to WFX (x=anywhere) we should also consider flexible time – to account for all the additional roles/chores that we have to deal with because of the pandemic," she said.
5P framework in the context of 'future of work'
Kaveri believes while we have all come to terms that we will undergo a shake-up at many levels – things are not extremely different from what we had predicted with the help of experts in 2019.
"We brought out salient points in IET Engineering the Future of Work Playbook. Our analysis said changes will happen along the lines of what we conceptualised as a 5Ps framework - People, Platforms, Places, Practices and Policies."
"On the people front, industries are already grappling with tough questions – how do we minimise the impact on our employees' given revenues have trickled down? Can we explore new ways of employment – like Cross-Industry Exchange of Talent and nebulous workforces than carry a high cost for manpower?" she said.
On the Platform front, she questions organisations to consider the scenario we are in as an opportunity to digitise and restructure? And can they invest in upskilling the workforce and make the first step to automate the repetitive tasks?
"As far as Places are concerned – do we need the large glass palaces we are used to? Given that social distancing measures are here to stay – can we look at the hub and spoke model offices in multiple parts of the city?" Kaveri asked.
"On the parameter for Practices – is it possible for us to devise learning, development, and wellbeing practices tailored to every employee's physical and mental health needs? And lastly, for Policies – how do we better prepare as a nation for these eventualities – can a national registry of skills be made and updated so that all the gig platforms can be linked to it?" she concluded.
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