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To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote
work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage
remote work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
How to effectively Managing Remote Work during COVID-19 phase?
Dr. Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay and Prof. (Dr.) B K Mukhopadhyay
Disruption also creates opportunity. Case
counts of COVID-19 all over the world is
growing every day. A Japanese cosmetics
company called Shiseido asked 8000 employees
to work from home out of concerns over the
virus outbreak, similarly in London companies
like Crossrail, OMD and Chevron have asked
employees to work from home. Even for
companies that are struggling recently, e.g.,
Hitachi whose sales fell by 33% last year, have
asked employees to work from home in this
phase. Tencent in China, popular for video
games, social media and e-tail have asked
mainland employees to work remotely as well.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge the
practical challenges of companies who would
struggle to operate entirely virtually simply
because of the very nature of their businesses.
Examples may range from Starbucks, real-
estate, dining to Walmart.
Workplaces, schools and Universities across 80
countries where the slow-but-steadily invading
virus have already impacted decisively turned
to remote working with travel bans and work-
from-home regulations in place. While for the
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote
work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
education sector, blended learning or
technology enhanced learning or online
learning are not new concepts or practice, alike
the digitally managed app-based virtual
companies (particularly dominant in China,
e.g., Alibaba, DiDi, Meituan, ele.me, etc.) but it
is quite a new challenge or opportunity for
many other sectors and traditional work-based
organisations in an Economy. For those
interested in organisational behaviour, this
new practice of working remotely raises
questions on changing team working
dynamics, choice of communication modes,
personal anxiety and attitude, virtual
leadership, IT management, and overall impact
on team performance.
Employees can get exclusively task-focused in
this period given the solitude and lack of a
working environment around peers. While
goal-oriented action is generally good for
productivity, but detachment and loneliness
sourcing from disconnectedness from peers
could lead to fall in engagement and worker
motivation. Leadership, consequently,
becomes all the more important in this period.
It is also a time where leaders need to rethink
their personal preferences for particular staff
and be there for ‘everybody’, better evaluation
of in-group and out-group dynamics and
accordingly allocate tasks and responsibilities
based on employee skills and maintain overall
balance.
All employees, given their current level and
engagement, needs timely access information
and required resources. This is possible
virtually. Leaders also need to schedule virtual
meetings with clearly defined goals and
short/medium objectives during this period.
While keeping tabs on employees and
micromanaging needs to be avoided, it would
be equally prudent to keep track of everybody’s
work progress and needs from time to time.
Facetime, video conferences or even good ol’
phone calls could be better than long and
frequent emails. Keeping up employee
motivation and engagement levels should not
be any different for virtual workplaces, if not
more when everybody is anxious about the
impact of virus.
Appreciation for little things go a long way.
Instead of reiterating the importance of goal
alignment and weekly work objectives for the
newly formed virtual teams in this period,
appreciation and acknowledgment of team
progress during distress times could help
humanise a workplace and leader-follower
interactions. People working from home can
have family around, with little kids playing
around in an informal setting. Leaders need to
appreciate efforts put in consciously by the
employees to keep the work progress up while
being in a home environment.
For certain businesses like real estate though,
where agents need to tour properties with their
clients have faced a heavy setback. Similarly,
hourly paid workers don’t get paid, those in
retail, manufacturing, ride-hailing, dining,
healthcare, food delivery. For them, working
from home isn’t really a feasible option. Real
estate deals in countries where a large
percentage of population is under quarantine
or have travel ban have become severely
problematic. For leaders in this industry, they
will need to project the likely increase in
demand for property visits or purchases when
things get back to normalcy when they do. It
will inadvertently put added pressure on
agents, properties, renovation agencies, interior
decorator firms, and overall time management
ability of firms in this industry. Therefore, it is
also a good time to build up good virtual
portfolios of properties and its features where
clients could find out most details that they
need, as one step towards coping with a
problem due to arrive tomorrow.
The climate economists who have been
promoting remote work might find this phase
interesting and useful to build further case in
point. Employees who don’t go to the office are
not using and paying for commute, thereby
leaving less carbon footprint. On the other
hand, there will be an increased business for
hand sanitizers, as it for masks today, when
employees are told to return to the office when
things get back to old ‘normal’. While this may
be a time for no commutes, fairly flexible
schedule, home cooked lunch, more time with
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote
work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
family, walking around in the house to de-
stress when work pressure goes up –
employee’s mental health has however to be
prioritised by leaders.
It is possible for us to work from anywhere
today. In the US, about 29% employees did
their jobs remotely in 2018, according to
the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Among
workers ages 25 and older, 47% of workers
with a bachelor’s degree or higher worked
from home sometimes, according to BLS
data, compared to just 3% of workers with
only a high school diploma. For
Universities, lessons are shared virtually.
Recently in China, almost all mainland as
well as Sino-foreign colleges have their
teaching staff deliver lecture videos, live or
recorded, via zoom or skype and also
setting up platforms where class resources
can be shared by all learners. However,
when it comes to assessment and
evaluations, it can get quite practically
challenging as how teachers would
evaluate group work, presentations and
provide formative feedback.
Technology remains the key in this period and
clearly there is an added pressure on R&D and
company IT services that leaders are aware of.
It is important to not put added pressure on
existing technology while ensuring everybody
can access and use it as much as it is needed for
a given workload level. This month, JPMorgan
Chase had asked 10% (out of a total of 127,000)
of their employees to work from home, thereby
allowing the company to test its plan for office
closures. Amazon followed the same step and
their employees were asked to log in remotely
using company VPN. It is nothing new that
companies use VPNs dependent on traffic over
the public Internet. This is primarily because
public internet is an unreliable transport that
can develop problems as connections are made
from different parts of the world. This trying
time can test whether existing corporate VPNs
are up to the challenge of suddenly supporting
a large remote workforce.
There can be problems of VPN overloaded
from spikes in traffic, e.g., if Amazon’s 750,000
employees all simultaneously connect to the
corporate VPN, it will very likely crash. This
could pose significant challenge when
technology cannot be used because it has been
overloaded and crashed. Similar to VPNs,
pressures can mount on video conferencing
applications who will bear new pressures in
this period. Therefore, a careful proportionate
use of technology must be maintained. Not too
much or too little.
Finally, while considering these measures in
place during the remote-working phase, it
could be an opportunity to identity newer ways
to evaluate how effective remote work can be
for your organisation and record the steps.
Once things get back to normalcy, the data
would allow managers to reflect what worked
and what didn’t, and most importantly – why.
This could build new organisational
knowledge.