FAZIL NAZIR
fazilalwayshere@gmail.com
Since time immemorial, man used to pacify his hunger from natural resources. Now, every livelihood starts running from home to workplace and moving back. The cycle goes on and on until any untoward incident. People move from villages to small towns, from small towns to cities and cities to metropolitan cities. It involves all sectors whether organized or un-organized depending upon the skills, knowledge and experience. With migration a lot of things move culture, ethos, values – promoting cultural diversity and inclusivity. Sometimes, the picture is not so bright and fancy. Migration has its own demerits like mushrooming of slums across outskirts of cities. It gives rise to a number of issues that becomes hard to address.
Organizations work with clear objectives. They recruit and compensate people according to the experience, education and skills towards a certain job. People from all walks of life are recruited depending upon the type of organization and designations. It doesn’t matter to which color, creed, sex and religion you belong. The bottom line is to have particular set of skills. Employees are expected to reach to office from their residencies. Every team has a star called Late-Comer. Employees punch their attendance on biometric devices. The work starts with checking inboxes with cross-culture breakfast/lunch/Brunch and chit chats that amuses certain people. Training Sessions, Business meetings and Presentation/Reporting are blood to any organizations promoting employee efficiency and adaptability. All the processes flow from top level to the low level and activities bounce back to the top level. In such a packed life employee engagements take place like celebrating birthday parties, festivals, and of-course Rewards and Recognitions. Some organizations even have devised employee wellness programs like Gyming and Yoga practices to keep employees’ health positive, and also promote positivity. All of this to help employees discover new skills and adapt to new challenges. The working hours may be 9-10 hours per day depending upon the work and finally employees leave to their home. They travel back from office to home and prepare meals for dinner. Then the body rests and mind becomes dormant after taking sleep. The routine starts again.
With the onset of Covid-19 Pandemic last year, employees and organizations were facing a lot of challenges to work together. Movement has been restricted. No more travelling to and fro. To cope up with situation homes became offices and roads that led to offices were deserted. Most of the employee felt this decision right but with the passage of time people learned the demerits of working from home. Employee became more virtual than ever. The actual vibrancy of personality of employees got limited and this affected our work and social lives. We don’t have to get ready like we used in the Pre-Pandemic times and don’t have to travel and see the daily hustle and bustle going around. We don’t have to see different people no matter how beautiful/poor/rich/ they are. You only have to turn the laptop and sit there unless your bio-needs want to move around. The travel time is saved, however, you are devoting the same to your work. Network and light issues are rampant to the current virtual world. Tracking employees will be challenging exercise although gadgets will help. However, all of them are connected with the data we are using.
Virtual methods have been employed to keep employees engaged like conducting exercises, Whatsapp birthday wishes, show and tell, and much more. All of them are made to make employees elated, however, the social participation is missing. The social connect is missing no matter how sophisticated virtual elements are. Every unit of laptop device operated by a human will be a device.