Jamshedpur, Dec 23: How does the `home-office' concept fit into the HR industry? The question, felt many, needed to be addressed, keeping in mind the sweeping and revolutionary power of the Internet and the way companies are already envisioning the way business would be done in the 21st century.Devashis Ohri, director (HR), Arthur Anderson and Ranjan Acharya, vice-president (Corp HR), Wipro Ltd, spoke on the subject at length to Arindam Sinha soon after they made a presentation on "HR Practices for Knowledge Workers". Excerpts:
What is the future of HR, particularly, with respect to the "home-office" concept?
Devashish Ohri (DO): The home-office concept is certainly a useful concept and it will determine which part of the job doesn't need an interface. Secondly, we have to decide whether you need to invest in a home-office over and above the investment in an organisation's infrastructure. We need to look at whether we need to invest Rs 2 lakhs per home-office or save those Rs 2 lakhs somewhere in the organisation's infrastructure.
So, you can't be blocking 40,000 sq. ft of office space on one hand and encourage home-office. Because, then that will duplicate and double cost. So, there should be a business argument.
Ranjan Acharya (RA): My own feeling is that every function will have to bring value to the business. Therefore, HR has to share transaction components. There was a time when time-keeping and other activities were HR jobs but now that is largely getting computerised. Even follow-ups for appraisals are getting computer-based because you can make web-based follow-up systems.
But there will be a certain specialised HR knowledge. Now, part of it might happen in-house, those which are context-specific.
How far are we from the "home-office" situation?
DO: Two things limit it. One is certainly technology or the adequate prevalence of technology. And the second issue which limits it is that our work processes are not that well-defined. We need to define how much a person is needed at office. We need to define it after studying work patterns. Otherwise we will make that investment and still expect the person to be in the office.
Is it going to bring down costs for the organisation?
DO: Certainly, costs would come down if it consciously sees it as a part of a business plan rather than something which was nice on a person.
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