Work from Anywhere
Work from Anywhere: A viable alternative for small and medium enterprises
The Covid 19 pandemic has changed our life and thinking in many ways. It tore apart societal, political and corporate fabric as we knew it and reknit it into a different form. While large corporates have the resources to manage this upheaval, small and medium enterprises have to scramble to engage a new world view that is emerging.
The usual milieu of bustling offices processing knowledge to provide services to other industries is facing many challenges. Close to eight months of shutdown has caused many skilled employees move back to hometowns or more cost effective locales as the” work from anywhere “practice empowers them to do. The initial doubts of the WFA’s effectiveness have been scotched by increasing reports about increased employee productivity, increased employee satisfaction, better work life balance and so on.
However, as economies are slowly recovering, businesses are facing tremendous pressures on their bottom lines. The need to economise and cut back on expenses while delivering at shorter notice is becoming the order of the day. The lockdown and resulting job losses has also created a fear psychosis in skilled migrant employees who now prefer the safety of their home lands.
Large organisations that do not require co-working for their deliveries such as those that specialise in knowledge based services such as Tata Consulting Services (TCS) (418,000 employees) and the US Patent and Trademark Office have found WFA to be a viable win- win alternative . These are just two examples of many large organisations that have opted for remote work forces.These large corporates have the financial clout, the technology and prior experience of work from home to transition easily to WFA model.
Small and Medium organisations , however, who had limited WFH experience, more as a result of desiring employee convenience, and adequate co-working space for all their staff to assemble regularly are now finding it difficult to achieve the sort of economies in costs that large organisations are obtaining through WFA. Migrant skilled workers who used to be a significant part of their workforce and who had perhaps lost their jobs or wary of tougher laws are returning to their homelands creating a shortage of cost effective skilled workforce. (India has reported a total of over 3 million Indians having returned under their Vande Bharat mission to repatriate Indian nationals from 21 countries). The competition for such US based talent is intense as the number of such professionals has shrunk.
Small and Medium enterprises therefore need to obtain a way to deliver their services seamlessly, safely, cost effectively and quickly while mitigating immigration issues.
India offers a huge pool of English speaking trained and highly skilled manpower. Migrant Indian IT professionals have already proven themselves capable of delivering high end cost effective services quickly in the US.
Solvable creations, has a two decade history of staffing services and is well positioned with its Indian office, to offer small and medium enterprises, such skilled manpower in the IT services arena both on short term projects as well as establish remote delivery centers if required.
Solvable creations has or can put in place adequate safeguards in place for data security and integrity. India is already hosting backoffice services for many large corporates and providing transaction based security using AI/ Algorithm based security protocols. India has more than adequate high speed broad band connectivity.
Issues of communication, mentoring, co- working, problem solving and brain storming are easily addressed using the small meeting or a town hall approach on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or such platforms. Contentious issues such as performance evaluation , employee welfare and HR expenses are removed from the expenses as compensation is clearly work based on prior agreed parameters.
The talent pool in India is very large with thousands of IT engineers from premier institutes in India joining the workforce every year, Solvable creations, with its ample recruitment and staffing expertise, can offer the best solution to small and medium enterprises in the US. These organisations will thus become more competitive with significant cost reductions in rental, utility and legal costs and also gain from a cost effective skilled work force.