Technology

4-C’s of Work from Home

Recently due to outbreak of Covid-19 virus we got introduced with a new work culture named “work from home”. Though this is not a brand new culture, most of the western countries and USA particularly use to follow this either by choice or to bridge the geographical barrier. In India too some western or USA patronise MNCs following this culture for their senior officials placed in India. Until now whoever are following this culture, they are doing it either by choice or for business need. Now scenario is completely different we are forced to adopt this culture due to an emergency situation.

In India except senior officials most of the middle level or junior staffs are using desktops for data security reasons. For service industries (excluding essential services like bank, insurance) “work from home” culture can be adopted easily through change in service guidelines and setup of proper communication channels. But for other industries like manufacturing, construction, real estate, EPC, etc., it is not easy to adopt “work from home” culture because their most of the work done on site. With all this explanations also we need to remember we are doing it by force not by choice, so be a manufacturing or service we need to find out a way to do a weighted average of the work situation.

We all aware about the concept called 4P’s of marketing Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. This concept actually defined the Marketing Mix in a very simple language. This concept talked about what to sale, where to sale, how to sale, and when to sale. In the same guide line, I tried to define the mantra of success behind the work from home with 4C’s theory: - Culture, Concentration, Communication, and Control.

Culture: - For creating a good work environment and performance driven work force, it is very much important to impose very good culture. Every organization has its own culture and every employee need to follow the same. In this matter we need to remember “work from home” is not only a process it is a culture, so if we accept this culture wholeheartedly like we are adopting the culture of the organization where we are working for then we can make it very much successful.

Concentration: - Sitting in the work station quite a bit easy to concentrate in the work. In the office people are under constant supervision, tremendous pressure of deadlines and other unavoidable influences. But in the home we are a bit more relaxed. In home we are always surrounded by our own beloved people and if there is a small kid in home then it’s extremely difficult to concentrate in the work. This is a real challenge and we can overcome this situation by adopting simple methods like 1. time management, 2. Finding a suitable and silent place in the house where we can properly concentrate in the work, 3. Take a periodic short break where you can talk to your loved one’s etc. By this way we can make work from home as fun and also concentrate well to finish our job in time.

Communication: -Communication play a very important role in this culture.  When people are in office they use to interact with all the peoples like superiors, subordinates, colleagues and other stake holders whomever is required but in home we are alone, so it is very important for a person to communicate properly with all his/her stake holders for smooth completion of the work.

Control: - Putting a proper control on this process is very important. Supervisor/Controller need to put some proper process by which he/she can take proper update from the teams on regular basis. Like instead of sending a formal mail to someone, create an informal WhatsApp group where he/she can take a proper update from the team as and when required. It can serve two purposes, people can chit chat together in the free time like they use to do in the office and secondly it will create a proper healthy competition in the team regarding the work.

This 4C’s concept is not only limited to the examples provided above, people can change their style and the way of implementation as per situation also they can further innovate as per their need keeping with the base line same.