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Wired,
But in Peace
An
executive leaves Bandra for a quaint village on the French Alps, another
takes off to his hometown by the river in Kerala. Working from hometowns
and remote locations is a concept that is catching the fancy of CXOs
It was a
big departure: last August, USborn Richard Cooper, 57, said goodbye to the
dirt, dust and grime of Bandra for the French Alps along with his Indian
wife Binita and their two children. The wife had to step down as managing
director of Forevermark India, the local arm of the diamond brand of the De
Beers group.
After searching many months, the Coopers finally
settled for Le Gollet, a village of just 60 people. “We ended up spending
much of our time in India in the hills. So we thought, ‘Why shouldn’t we
settle in the Swiss hills?’ That is how we landed up in this ancient home
here,” says Richard, who holds a person of Indian origin (PIO) card.
The Coopers are among a small but growing breed of
highly paid Indiabased executives who crave for the best of both worlds — a
home in an idyllic, rural setting and a corporate job. While Richard
continues to work the way he used to — as a consultant for investment banks
and other financial institutions on leadership, training, etc — Binita says
she had to give some, take some. “You have to be prepared for the change.
You can’t have everything… but I live in a great place,” says Binita, who
continues to work, as a consultant for luxury businesses, helping with
training, recruitment, research and so on. “I just have to meet my
deadline. My work hours are highly flexible. It is an intellectually
stimulating regimen.”
In Le Gollet, there are no traffic snarls, no loud
horns of vehicles. There is fresh air and menacingly fit neighbours to draw
inspiration from. The children have all the fun: they ski, play guitar,
dance, take part in village fairs, sell homemade tarts and speak a new
language, French. Le Gollet is far enough to be a quaint hamlet, yet close
enough to the nearest airport. Geneva is just an hour away by car.
The ‘Come Home’ Evangelist
James Joseph, 41, took the experiment a step further.
Some years ago, he had an invigorating chat with a
local farmer in his hometown of Aluva, near Kochi, Kerala, who asked him to
convince big corporates to shift to the country’s small towns. It wasn’t a
compelling argument, but it was convincing enough for Joseph who soon
confronted his bosses in Microsoft India with a proposal: he would work
from Aluva.
The response was mixed, but they relented finally,
letting him work for six months from Aluva “to see how it goes”, says this
father of three girls, born in three different continents where he had
worked previously. He went on to work for four years as director, executive
engagement, which saw him strengthening Microsoft’s relationship with the
senior executives of India’s top 200 enterprises. Joseph also went on to
win what is internally considered “the Oscar award in Microsoft”, the
Circle of Excellence Award, for employee performance.
During his Kerala stint, he also set up an organic
farm next to his cottage-office that overlooked the Aluva river, where he
grew fruit and vegetables. “We are the net producers and net consumers of
the produce,” he says. “My experience has been so enriching that I decided
to spread the word, Come Home,” Joseph adds, explaining his decision to
quit Microsoft and float an online platform, Professional Bharati, to
encourage professionals to return to healthier, small-town locations while
continuing to hold their hot jobs.
After all, many Indian small towns are only as far
from metros as other metros are. For instance, Aluva, like Le Gollet, is
well-connected to the nearest airport, Kochi, which is just 20 minutes
away.
“If you consider the traffic congestion in big
cities, small towns are closer to most metro cities,” argues Joseph who
will now take up freelance work.
Life is Elsewhere?
Enhanced air connectivity is certainly one of the best outcomes of the
opening up of the Indian aviation sector, though the industry is currently
facing huge headwinds.
In fact, the Centre is expected to spend $40
billion over the next 10-12 years for building and upgrading airports.
Airline operators are adding new fleet every year to meet the massive rise
in demand.
Then there is internet connectivity. Bhuvaneswar
Naik, vice-president, human resources at SAP India, the local arm of the
German software major, hopes that with Web services showing a marked
increase in quality, more executives in the knowledge industry may choose
farther locations to live and work. In a country where people with access
to toilets are less than those who use cellphones, national agencies expect
mobile phones to drive the growth of internet. Data reveal that of nearly
900 million mobile phone users, 346 million subscribes to data packages.
This means more than half of all internet users in the country access the
Web through their mobile phone—and though complaints abound, the quality of
internet services, too, is improving.
SAP is one of those very employeefriendly companies in India that, along
with AT&T, Google, Yahoo! India, Dell and others, allow employees to
work from home. SAP lets all its employees work from home one of the five
workdays a week. “Productivity hasn’t gone up thanks to this move. But it
hasn’t gone down either,” says Naik, emphasising that no company in India
can afford to introduce a policy that allows the staff to work
from their hometowns or
remote locations. “It has to be a need-based
consideration. Otherwise, it will not work in India,” he says. SAP did let
one of its employees work from his hometown, but that is one of the few
exceptions. Aditya Gurajada, director of technical engineering at SAP’s
unit Sybase, works out of his Hyderabad home. We can let a person work from
any remote location in India, but there has to be a sufficient reason why
he should work from there, Naik avers. “However, a policy cannot be
formalised because that will mean creating an entitlement for an employee,”
he adds, echoing the general concern among most employers in India.
A Few Hurdles
While the West has seen the migration of jobs from cities to small
towns in recent years, thanks to those who wanted to cut the cost of living
— besides hordes of determined creative people who parked themselves in
remote locations — in India, what sociologists call reverse migration still
remains a far cry, say experts. According to Cooper, South West Airlines
famously offered its call centre employees in the US the option of working
from home, and in the process enhanced productivity.
The obstacles to migrating back to the roots
everywhere are, of course, the nature of jobs. “Those involved in people
management cannot be allowed to work from home or hometown, unlike those in
technology-driven creative jobs,” says Naik. Non-IT companies are mostly
reluctant to dole out such lollies to employees, says a top executive of a
Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate who didn’t wish to be named. Besides,
surveys have indicated that employees who work away from office HQ tend to
get passed over for promotion more frequently than those who work in HQs.
Both Naik and the Mumbai executive say that is not always true. But the
onus is on the employee (remote worker) to make her presence felt, says
Naik.
Joseph says he was astonished by his growth “both
on the professional and the personal front” ever since he shifted to Aluva.
He says he didn’t miss being part of the “high-powered circuit” at the
office headquarters. He also terms the response from Indian CXOs to his new
initiative “tremendous”.
But questions persist: are companies adventurous
enough to let their best employees work from afar? Can an employee’s
personal fulfilment translate to company profits? How many employees would
want to take such a big risk to pursue a lifestyle that beckons them? More
significantly, is a slower pace of life conducive to productivity and
growth?
“I took a big gamble,” Joseph agrees.
In his case it seems the risk was worth taking.
The World is a Small Place
Marshal McLuhan’s forecast of the world being a global village — thanks
to the internet that has made it as easy to communicate with a person on
the other side of the globe as with someone in the same village — holds
very true for CXOs
Rays of Hope
Professional Bharati is an online forum that encourages and helps CXOs
and other executives to work from their hometowns/ villages. It was
launched this month by a former Microsoft senior executive, James Joseph.
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