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Arindam Sen: Hello, and welcome back. My name is Arindam Sen, and I am a partner at EY, based in Bangalore. I lead the Global Business Services practice. I hope in these tough times you are safe and healthy wherever you are.

This podcast is in continuation of our last podcast where we had an interesting discussion about productivity and measuring productivity with Manoj Kalra, Head of the Group Business Services at DSM and Umesh NV, Managing director of Otis Global Shared Service.

Today we’ll delve into some critical people and change management considerations and the future outlook on productivity in the industry. Without any further ado let’s dive right into it, beginning with you Umesh.

There are some very critical people and change management considerations when it comes to actually embarking on this journey of measuring productivity. What should you measure? How should you measure it? We spoke about privacy concerns, about laws that exist in certain countries, what would be your recommendation to anyone listening to this podcast in terms of what are some of those critical considerations that people should take into account when they are starting off on this journey?

Umesh: Yes, and thank you, before I move into that, I want to also use to the previous conversation, a terminology that we use, we call ourselves accountants without borders. That terminology that goes very well in the current perspective.  The new normal of remote working and associated lack of direct supervision. It leads to a lack of confidence in the way goals are achieved and measured. So, a lot of technical tools are being looked at to manage productivity by a lot of organizations. The associated pros and cons of productivity measurement show that a carefully managed set of data points offer. With an open communication about the new metrics, it can be definitely beneficial and helps in the smooth chain management that we are talking about. So we don't care for management, the negatives of these tools are likely to be quite, overall negative for an employee engagement perspective. So, it is important as an organization to make an employee believe that there is trust in their commitment to achieve the goals, yes, we trust them.  The process is very transparent, that is being randomly rolled out to ensure that both are mutually beneficial to an organization as well as the employee, okay. So the change has to be that that will smooth and smooth and transparent. The changeover from physical supervision and measurement, that one hand during work from office to digital management during remote working has to be almost smooth and totally transparent. You know, I am re-emphasizing this, again, that the privacy or in them that you talked about is critical to a lot of organizations, particularly if an employer is a BPO, for example, and handle extremely critical data of their customers. Protecting IP and sensitive data is important. Enabling a process to protect should not be seen as snooping. In some cases, at the same time, employees should be told why it is being done, so that they understand the important because when you're in the office, you're within the four walls of all the firewalls in security and then data protection is not an issue but then somebody working from home, it becomes that much more difficult to manage that CPS leader should be mindful of not overstepping this requirement at the same time, so that the employees monitoring activity of screen time, etc. should not be leading to a lack of trust, because it is done for a different purpose. That should be properly explained. There are a lot of companies in countries where legal issues have come up due to the invasion of privacy. It's quite serious there are data privacy and IP related business issues. How can we protect data privacy in that sense, at the same time protecting and employee privacy, becomes in some countries, it's a really serious issue. Implementation of tools which are open and transparent. That helps just the productivity aspect of it at the same time taking care of all the legal and other issues. And using a digital model that we talked about, where an employee the tools enable the employee to see his performance himself rather than being pointed out by somebody else, so that helps him to actually self-evaluate and perform better. So, I think these are the aspects that we would consider.

Arindam Sen: Thanks a lot for that Umesh. The digital huddle will resonate with a lot of the folks listening and it's been mentioned by both Manoj and Umesh. Now, if I just come to the last question on really on this discussion, which I have, and it's both for you - Manoj and Umesh. Maybe Manoj you can go first is, , we've discussed this in many, many forums, a lot of people bring this up the question on measuring productivity, do you see that as something that is, , maybe not that high on our priority list is just a fad? Or is this a genuine concern that you have, even because of your respective GPS centers? Is this something that bothers you? And specifically, does it bother you even more, given the fact that you are not currently in office, at least for most of us, seeing your employees face to face an ongoing basis? Do you see this as a trend that will continue and potentially will become an important factor as newer GPS centers are opened and more GPS centers mature in their journey?

Manoj: So Arindam, measurement of productivity has been there for ages. It's not a new concept. What is changing now is the way we measure it and the ethos behind that pre Covid-19 days. We got into a mindset of getting more by using tools by using Lean principles, and by finding better ways of getting more done per hour. Now, it's more output driven. For me, productivity is not about how much has got done in a day. But what is the experience that we are giving to our customers. Post COVID-19, what is also changed is because of the borderless talent, and the lack of constraints to broaden your thinking. We now are seeing ourselves, penetrating more even into the business side of things where we can start defining the experience of end users the experience of customers, and technology is playing a big role in that. So, I think productivity measure will remain. However, the ethos behind that will change, it will be about experience, it will be about how well are you utilizing the robotics around you? What kind of data can you infer out of what's happening, because what we're also seeing is whatever is rapid, whatever is reputable, whatever is rule based, can be automated. That's, that's where I see productivity, the theme around productivity changing, we will continue to measure in some form or the other. But the results will be driving different kinds of actions from there.

Arindam Sen: Thank you, Manoj. Umesh, if I may have your perspective on that question as well, please,

Umesh: I think Manoj did a great job and covered most of the pointers. But, what I would say is productivity measurement was always there, and will continue to be there and more becomes more important in the current virtual world that we are all living in we need to measure employees against outcomes rather than time spent, that becomes very critical for us. In the current situation, as long as it is well within the agreed timeframe, less time consuming, inexpensive, it is always good to have new tools, and also to keep employees aware and also being productive. So, from my perspective, the measurement will stay in one form or the other. There is an accepted way of doing things in the new normal. But the degree of implementation of the tools and techniques will be put to test in different organizations based on the requirements they have. The laws of the local area where they operate, determines that as well, you know, organizations will surely evolved over a period of time due to the need new demands and requirements, in my view to sum it up the best employee monitoring tools or transparent workflows, completely involved and empathic leaders, and a collaborative environment that would create even in a virtual world. So that's how I would like to sum it up.

Arindam Sen: Excellent. Thanks a lot. So, for those listening into this podcast, what you've heard so far is that we started off with this thought about productivity measurement. We spoke about the fact that indeed, we see a rising trend where this is a concern, and definitely a topic for discussion. You heard today, two GBS leaders from different industries, talk about their perspectives on this, both Manoj and Umesh highlighted that productivity as a measure has been there for a long time. But what I took away from this is, it’s not just a question of measurement of throughput. These are not industry lines, where you're making products and then you've got robotic arms that are working and you're measuring the throughput These are people and these people are very much employees of the larger organization or part of the centers. Here you've got to take into consideration their emotional wellbeing their respect of privacy and so on so forth. Right? We've got to make productivity measurement, much more humane affair than just crunching of numbers and throughput per hour per hour and so on so forth. The other thing that sort of came out of this discussion both from ovation Manoj was that, , this this model has shifted a little bit too much more outcome based discussions, but not specifically talked about improving experience of customers right, rather than just again, relegating this down to a measure of buy hour how much work are you doing? However, they both touched upon certain challenges, we're not specifically talking about the new ways of working. Its intersection point with the past ways of working, where you got new employees who are coming in. Employees who exist or leaders who exist who've done certain things a certain way throws up a lot of challenges. We discussed a little bit about how this might shape future HR best practices. Umesh specifically spoke a lot around privacy laws and the concerns that certain countries have around this, what we would call the snooping effect. So that's obviously a big concern. But there are many positives to take away from this discussion, as you would have heard digital huddles etc. Productivity as a measure need not always have a negative connotation associated with it. That's something that we wanted to get away from this will let you be the judge of that. Once you heard this podcast, please leave us your comments. We would love to hear back from you in terms of what you're thinking or what challenges are you facing in your centers. Thank you so much Manoj and Umesh for giving us the time and speaking to us. And hopefully this is of use to everyone listening to this podcast. So, we will conclude here. Thank you very much again to the folks that are listening to this podcast. We'll see you on the next one with another very interesting topic. Thank you and goodbye!

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