3 minute read 10 Nov 2020
How technology is changing the future of work

Leveraging technology to create a Workplace of the future

By Arindam Sen

EY India Global Business Services & Operations Partner

Seasoned technology executive with rich experience in digital transformation. Leader in setting up GCCs. Enjoys playing badminton, drums and composing electronic music.

3 minute read 10 Nov 2020

Show resources

  • Work from home in the Insurance industry: Adapting to the new normal

Work, Workplace and workforce are important topics within the GCCs as they embrace sophisticated operating model to create a Workplace of the future.

Leveraging technology to create a Workplace of the future

On 24 March 2020, when India announced a complete lockdown for 21 days, senior management officials from one of the leading Global Capability Centers (GCC) with over 27,000 employees maintained their calm as they had been preparing for such an adverse event as part of their Business Continuity Plan for a period of time.  Over the next four weeks, the team worked diligently towards adopting the future of work by transitioning all employees to work remotely, ensuring that customers’ work was not impacted by teams working remotely.

Since 2018, the GCC had been reviewing their real estate strategy with a focus to optimize its overall real estate spend as part of a ‘Workplace of the future’ strategy and also with an eye towards improving employees’ work life balance by gradually setting up processes and teams to work remotely periodically. To ensure that this does not become a meagre ‘nice to have’, a stringent approval process was created to ensure employees complied and worked remotely on the days identified. Further, by mid-2019, all employees were given laptops. This was another factor that worked in their favour to ensure a smooth cutover.

To enable remote working, the team had to battle its fair share of challenges. Leadership within the organization had to be trained to effectively manage remote teams, customers had to be convinced that this manner of working would not lead to data privacy issues or security breaches. Employees had to be trained on how to manage their time when working remote given that a large demographic of the population were young adults at the early stages of their career.

Policies were revamped to incorporate strong information security governance requirements, as were employee handbooks and the code of conduct manuals. As technology plays a  strong role as an enabler in the future of work, a modernization exercise was also undertaken in parallel to help further ease the challenges.

From the initial days of the lockdown, periodic surveys have been conducted to assess the productivity impact; self-reported data was analyzed in conjunction with data from other automated sources to provide a consolidated view. The analysis continued to show very positive signs of marginal decrease in productivity; reduced need for leaves and flexible working hours added about 10% to the overall scale. 

Older technology, power outages, internet connectivity, home office constraints and collaboration were some of the detractors that brought it down by about 11%, for a difference in productivity of approximately 1% from the pre-COVID times. It was also understood that a reduced requirement to take leaves would be a temporary phenomenon and the inclusion of reimbursements for home internet and even UPS devices would further reduce the impact of the detractors.

It was also during these times when the GCC gradually shifted from Skype to Microsoft Teams, which in hindsight was the right decision. By the end of March, 50% of the user base had migrated to Teams and by the end of July, Skype usage across the firm was negligible. However, what was impressive was the immediate shift to the adoption of digital collaboration tools within the firm, especially for a population that was less used to working remotely. While private chats at the end of March jumped to an astounding figure of 31 million from a measly 26 thousand in January, team chats were up almost 1600%. What was interesting to note that the number of Team chats gradually reduced by almost 50% at the end of July, from a peak in April. This could mean one of two things, either the rate of collaboration had significantly reduced, or most employees were now spending more time collaborating on what was relevant as opposed to “binging” on the chat platform. Whatever be the case, with the initial hype around remote collaboration gradually subsided, to make way for normalcy and stability.

The future can only build from here; more sophisticated operating models are now being envisioned by the GCC to include increased cross skilling, the use of gig workers that reduce the need for hiring in large numbers and outsourcing some of the activities to other specialized partners. With onboarding of new employees becoming completely virtual, cultural integration is now being closely looked at, the use of technology to bring the ‘in room’ experience to learning and engagement is helping achieve greater levels of togetherness, teaming and ideation.

As with all other companies, Work, Workplace and workforce are important topics within the firm and looking ‘Beyond’, the opportunities look exciting and warrant this focus.

Summary

Sophisticated operating models are now being envisioned by the GCC to include increased cross skilling, the use of gig workers that reduce the need for hiring in large numbers and outsourcing some of the activities to other specialized partners.

About this article

By Arindam Sen

EY India Global Business Services & Operations Partner

Seasoned technology executive with rich experience in digital transformation. Leader in setting up GCCs. Enjoys playing badminton, drums and composing electronic music.