5 Reason why 'Work from Home' will not work in India.
1. Working without supervision - In a developing country like India where millions of workers are either unskilled or underskilled, it become very important to supervise the workers. In India, workers without supervision is like sun without light. In India it exist- either the manager is helicopter in nature or the employees need guidance. Moreover, over the years it has become a culture in Indian workforce that a supervisor is crucial in any form or any sector, be it a manager or a contractor. Employees are used to work under supervision. Specially in a country where more than 80% of the engineers do not know basic coding , it become very important for someone to supervise them. But work from home is about working without any such supervision. And Indian employees will definitely loose their efficiency on an average.
2. Time Management- Well, this is probably a key factors for any firm or individual to succeed or rather to perform good in their respective fields. We all have a time constraint of 24 hours a day and thus management of time becomes crucial at every point of time. Working in an Office environment gives a zeal and enthusiasm to workers to manage their working hours in such a way that they should complete their tasks within the allotted time so that they should not have to work after the office hours, but at home this crucial factor fades it's importance. Particularly in India and South Asian countries, it has been found that employees prefer leisure on an average and the work which they are doing is either a need to them or a compromise and not their passion. In such a situation, if the employees are asked to work from home then they might get the incentive to relax and chill out and thus affecting the time management hack.
3. Being Organised- An organised employee automatically becomes 10 times efficient than an unorganised employee. It is always beneficial for a company to have organised employee who can add more value to the company. Being organised directly affects productivity and it does affect positively. The work culture in a formal setup like an office gives or rather motivates the employees to be organised because as it directly affects their productivity means it directly affects their remuneration and growth too. Employee tend to be organised at office or workplace because of the severe competition which they face among each other. The workplace triggers the idea or habit of being organised which unfortunately home do not give.
4. Communication- Work from home requires good communication skills. Many of the employees are hesitant to ask or bother their superior or team leader to assist them in any difficulty due to their weak communication skills. Either they are too shy or they have some sort of fear in their mind. Any of the two directly affects the firm. If work is to be done from office then this problem can be sorted out to some extent but it surely cannot be done if the workers are working from home
Moreover, communication along with gestures is far more better than communication through texts where one cannot gesturise or express themselves. Communication over phone, texts, video conferencing become very monotonic at times and the person sitting next to the screen might lose intrest . Work from Home lags behind in this crucial parameter.
5. Ethics & Integrity - I personally feel that this is the most important parameter . As how a person (employee) behaves or works when no one is watching. India ranks 80 in CPI in 180 countries. A company pays an employee as per their work as they are not doing charity. Most of the employees are seen wasting time even at their workplace. They tend to remain at office till late night just because of free riding of ACs and WiFi which are available over there. And with those so called, self proclaimed amenities they actually chill out by enjoying Netflix, etc. If an employee behaves like this at workplace then imagine how ethical would be the guy at his home. Most of them actually do their personal chores when working from home. Professionalism is something which they lack.
Thus, we can see that 'Work from Home' will not work in a country like India. It is a loss to the firm specially SMEs.
Share your thoughts with us.
-DC Sir
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