{"id":5040,"date":"2022-04-17T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-17T19:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.horsesforsources.com\/attrition-remote-working_041722\/"},"modified":"2022-04-30T12:27:08","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T12:27:08","slug":"attrition-remote-working_041722","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/attrition-remote-working_041722\/","title":{"rendered":"It is time to party like it’s 2019 if we’re going to save the services industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
Anyone close to the coal-face of IT and business process services engagements knows it, but few are admitting it:\u00a0 staff attrition is out of control and threatening to destroy the whole fabric of outsourcing if service providers fail to get ahead of it.<\/p>\n
And it’s abundantly clear what the biggest catalyst behind attrition is:\u00a0 remote working, especially in the services providers whose staff are predominantly based in India.\u00a0 Throw in a spike in demand for people with tech \/ business services experience and this is the impact:<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Click to enlarge<\/a><\/p>\n Four reasons why we need services staff back in the office<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Most developing staff struggle to learn to be innovative or creative stuck at home.<\/strong> Most staff will only focus on doing the basics of their job when they have no people around them to learn from, share ideas, test theories, etc.\u00a0 Let’s be honest, if people get their basic deliverables\u00a0done by lunchtime, will they really make time to learn new things, call their colleagues to share ideas, etc when they have so many other distractions to absorb their time?\u00a0 If they are in an office, they will find<\/em> other work-related things to do, they will talk to their teammates, ask questions of their managers and become far more productive.\u00a0 These staff will quickly develop themselves and warrant ongoing salary increases.<\/p>\n 2. Many experienced staff can deliver their current jobs from home, but run the risk of their activities being automated away.\u00a0<\/strong> There are very impressive platforms to manage call center work, basic IT support, accounting tasks, insurance claims, etc in remote environments, and we can be secure knowing these remote working platforms will keep the wheels on service delivery if\/when future pandemics – or other crises – force us back into Zoom-land.\u00a0 However, if repeatable tasks are run at scale remotely, pressure to keep costs to a minimum will drive ambitious providers to invest in more sophisticated automation that can keep staff numbers low and combat wage inflation.\u00a0 Employees who choose to work remotely have to keep training themselves to keep improving their value, otherwise they may find their jobs gradually disappearing.\u00a0 Net-net, work tasks are being automated regardless of whether or not staff are present in the office, however, people who do predictable, rules-based roles remotely are more prone to automation than those who are office-based and developing their creative\/innovative skills through team building and collaboration.<\/p>\n 3. Most managers pushing for “hybrid” work environments were hybrid workers pre-pandemic in any case.\u00a0<\/strong> How many people have told you they “intend to go into the office 1-2 days a week”?\u00a0 Yes, am sure many have and you may be intending the same for yourself.\u00a0 But these folks pre-2020 spent a good deal of their time on planes, visiting clients, attending conferences, visiting other global offices in any case.\u00a0 So they are really just looking to continue the hybrid office\/remote lifestyle they were accustomed to in the past.\u00a0 The only difference now is there is less reason to travel, and travel costs are a lot higher than before.\u00a0 This will level out as the pandemic fades and the world returns to something similar to 2019.\u00a0 The main difference today is that we’ve become more efficient<\/em> with our time and take much better advantage of video calls and a better-disciplined home\/work life.\u00a0 We also focus a lot more on our mental health and a better work\/life balance these days, which is a good thing for most of us who are becoming smarter and more creative, with a healthier appetite to develop our skills with less fear of change.<\/p>\n 4. Work cultures are suffering in today’s remote-confusion, which has been a major factor driving up attrition rates.\u00a0<\/strong> When your employment becomes servicing a brand from a corporate issue laptop with little interaction with your colleagues, you lose much of the emotional<\/em> ties you may have had for your organization.\u00a0 So why not jump for another faceless employer offering more money, longer holidays, and a promise of “learning new things”?\u00a0 Service provider leaders need to accept that they will struggle to retain many remote-based employees for long, as they simply cannot create a culture<\/em> that drives loyalty and long-term commitment.\u00a0 They have little choice but to get these folks back to the physical workplace, or plan to replace them with staff willing to work in-office.<\/p>\n The Bottom-line:\u00a0 Service providers with armies of developing people must bite the bullet and recreate dynamic work environments<\/span><\/p>\n The harsh reality is this remote-working culture simply is not working for most service providers.\u00a0 The numbers do not lie (and may actually be even more severe than reported).\u00a0 Service provider leaders worry that forcing staff back to the office will exacerbate their situation even further – and they may be right in the short-term.\u00a0 However, in the medium-long term, they cannot scale people and execution to satisfy the rampant client demand in today’s complex environment\u00a0(as we discussed recently here<\/a>).\u00a0 Smart service providers are biting the bullet and pushing hard to bring back their physical work cultures, as they already realize they are playing a dangerous zero-sum game trying to deliver critical services to huge global customers when a third of their people aren’t sticking around to keep the very fabric of their service delivery ticking along.\u00a0\u00a0They have to get the balance between adding freshers, expanding into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and investing in keeping the talent they need to retain. People, ultimately, are not a commodity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Staff attrition is out of control and threatens to destroy the whole fabric of outsourcing if service providers fail to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,81,858],"tags":[303],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-5040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-process-outsourcing-bpo","category-it-outsourcing-it-services","category-global-workforce-and-talent","tag-enterprise-irregulars"],"yoast_head":"\n