Biggest challenge in WFH is that many employees not trained to operate online: Rajesh Varrier

We chatted with Rajesh Varrier, the Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Experience and Microsoft Business at Infosys, to learn more about what he thinks about working remotely.

Rajesh Varrier, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Experience and Microsoft Business at Infosys.  (HT Tech )

Most of the world has grown to learn about working from home once the pandemic made us stay in and practice social distancing. While initially many companies fell apart while trying to deal with this new normal, everyone has eventually learned to cope and some have even moved towards a hybrid work model. As most experts we've spoken to suggest, all workplaces of the future are hybrid as it brings together the best of both worlds - working from the office and working from home.

We chatted with Rajesh Varrier, the Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Experience and Microsoft Business at Infosys, to learn more about what his opinions are about working from home and the future. Varrier too, not surprisingly, agrees that the future workplace is hybrid. He also has some things to point out about the challenges of working remotely. Here are excerpts from our chat:

We've mostly moved to remote working right now, while we know what the immediate issues were, what do you think the plus points are for a company to have employees working from home instead of from the office?

We envisage a future where the hybrid model of working is more acceptable than it has been in the past. The pandemic has clearly taught us that work-from-home can be as productive as work from the office. This model gives employees the ability to balance home and work front needs, better. It saves on travel time, which, in case we have forgotten, used to be really onerous in some of the cities across the world we operate in. An increase in the adoption of online meetings along with all of us getting better at online collaboration is going to lessen the need for traveling. These things are definitely some positive takeaways that could help us in many ways.

We've seen most offices struggle to keep up with this shift in workspaces and learning to cope, what more do you think companies need to do now to keep up?

Remote working brings in its own set of challenges and opportunities. For example, while businesses have the opportunity to look at hiring in markets they do not normally do, they may need to revisit their HR policies to accommodate, for the long term, things such as hybrid working models, leave policies, compensation policies for markets where they have not had employees before. Companies will also need to keep up or continue investing in technologies that will improve collaboration and enhance productivity.

What's an ideal home office set-up in your opinion, and to facilitate this, what should the company do?

Home office setup is not very complicated - you just need a desktop/laptop and internet connectivity. The challenge is that, in many industries, employees are not trained to operate completely online. Companies need to invest in training and technologies for enabling their employees. For instance, in the education sector, teachers are now conducting classes online. However, not every teacher has the technical know-how to create content on a PC for conducting classes live. It is important to not only invest in the right set of tools but also train them properly so that they can be as effective as they were in-person using a board in class.

How do you see workplaces transforming further as 2021 progresses?

Let us look at a postcard from the future in the workplace. The world will be moving towards heavy investments in digital technologies to make digital collaboration smoother. Investments in personal productivity and workplace tools will change rapidly to enable employees to do their job better. There will be a stronger impact of AI-enabled tools to improve productivity and speed of operations and industries will completely pivot to training employees on digital technologies as per job requirements.

What are the advantages of a hybrid workplace and should all companies try this model?

While there are definite advantages of working remotely, a completely remote working setup, takes away one crucial thing which happens when we are working in an office - building social capital. Hybrid working brings back that very important missing angle. It is critical to have a platform that can still have employees interact in person whenever possible. A hybrid work environment helps us achieve that. It's in a way the best of both worlds.