Gig workforce will be more prevalent: Nitin Kulkarni, Harbinger Group

The Harbinger Group has been transforming lives at every workplace. The Group envisions a world in which its products enable transformation through enterprise software, digital learning or product innovations. Nitin Kulkarni, COO at Harbinger Group, tells us more regarding the future of work. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: How are you dealing with the Covid-19 situation? What plans have you put in place?

Nitin Kulkarni: We are dealing with it very well. On the employee front, we have multiple online engagement and communication mechanisms to keep the teams engaged and motivated. We have a daily employee interaction called ‘VItaMIN’ where all employees come on to a video call and engage via chat as well as presenting some of their skills like singing, cooking, etc. There are daily mailers and counselor support that help employees cope with the lockdown in terms of their mental and physical well-being.

On the work front, we use the latest technologies to ensure that people can effectively work from home and collaborate on all their projects. So far, all our customer deliverables have been on schedule and our customers are extremely delighted that we have continued to support them effectively in these times. In terms of plans, we are continuously working on strategic planning for new offerings in the post-COVID-19 world as well as operational plans to enable a smooth resumption of services after the lockdown.

DQ: Are you giving employees more control over their schedules?

Nitin Kulkarni: We have always had a work environment that was focused on empowerment rather than control. We measure employees on deliverables, rather than trying to micro-manage their schedules. This has helped us well in the current work from home situation.

DQ: How are you assessing on learnings from enforced experiments around WFH?

Nitin Kulkarni: It is very important to have an efficient helpdesk that can quickly help employees with infrastructure related issues like VPNs, connectivity, software downloads, etc. IT is also extremely important to have various online employee engagement mechanisms to ensure that the employees are connected and motivated. These include online interventions related to training, HR events, skip-level meetings, town halls, etc.

We have successfully implemented the same and are planning to continue all these initiatives even post the lockdown. Having a large percentage of our employees working from home on a continuous basis will be an integral part of our operational model.

DQ: This is a challenging time for managers. What advice would you give them?

Nitin Kulkarni: Managers need to become better at empowering and trusting their teams. They need to increase and improve their interactions with the teams, and always be available in case any help is needed. Managers also need to dramatically increase connects with their customers and improve the level of transparency and reporting to their customers.

DQ: How does work/life balance work in a crisis like this?

Nitin Kulkarni: It can get difficult sometimes but we have seen that over a period of time, most people learn to plan their work and home activities well. It is important to stick to “office” timings and take “timeouts” during the day to do some non-work activities. On the other hand, given that travel times are zero, people find more time for pursuing other interests/hobbies.

DQ: What are the policy responses you would give to the MSMEs and SMEs?

Nitin Kulkarni: The government must create a substantial stimulus package for the MSMEs. In addition to this, lowering or waiver of taxes for at least a few quarters would also be desirable.

DQ: How are you now facilitating digital work?

Nitin Kulkarni: We are using some of the latest technologies to facilitate digital work. Technologies like Zoom and Teams are being used actively for collaboration. Our enterprise processes are already automated via cloud-based systems so our operational processes were already digitized.

DQ: How are the latest technologies going to redefine the workplace?

Nitin Kulkarni: Work from home will increase and will become a part of every company’s operational model. People will prefer to meet online rather than face to face. Gig workforce will be more prevalent because there will be technology platforms that will support this model. Implementation of social distancing norms at the workplace will become stringent. All training and development will move online, and concepts like nudge learning will be used extensively.

DQ: How do you plan for a future of ‘decent digiwork’?

Nitin Kulkarni: In most cases, the existing processes have been digitized. The future will be about reimagining these processes to take advantage of the technology. For example, almost every organization has some system to help them do performance management.

However, in the future, technology can help take performance management to the next level by enabling the employee on a real-time basis to track her performance, suggest improvement areas and strategies based on personalized data, etc. We plan to re-imagine quite a few of our internal processes, and bring in data science and personalization to make every process extremely employee-centric.