Remote working and mobility elevates the “paper-free” initiative across all companies

Dhananjay Chandrashekhar Rokde 
Chief Information Security Officer, the Multi-Commodity Exchange of India 

Remote work – Key trends & challenges
Globally, practices starting from headhunting to candidate selection and interviews, to on boarding are being successfully performed remotely. Activities post candidate selection is also performed online. Employee IT access is also provided digitally enabled (along with policy enforcement) across scenarios depending on the scenario adopted by the organisation Bring your Own Device (BYOD) / Mobility / company provided hardware.

Delivering paperless systems
Remote working and mobility have definitely boosted the “paper-free” initiative across all companies. Dozens of copies of paper print outs are required right at employee inception. Thanks to remote working these have been converted into digital contracts. Apart from a few statutory documents there is very little scan & print.

Procurement, taxation, accounting have also reduced paper usage to a great extent unknowingly as a result of remote working and investment in digitisation. All vendors, and 3rd parties have started honouring electronically signed contracts, invoices and tax / GST receipts.

The paper-free experience reduces the 30-40% time of logistics, adds efficiency and helps to inculcate the digital signatures into the ecosystem. People don’t have to travel to & fro just pick up or drop a document.

Strategies for business profitability
The workforce has now become more resilient to the pandemic, and more used to the new-norm of remote working. IT & HR play a very vital role in keeping the engagement levels high. Some of the ways to ensure that there is no drop in engagement of profitability are –

1.      Fixed leadership meetings – This way the workforce never lose sight of the target. Since the leadership is physically accessible it is easy for them to get distracted

2.      Continuous IT Improvement / Townhalls – IT needs to demonstrate value (however small) to all stakeholders, to show continuous improvement. IT townhalls need to be focussed on taking note of previous complaints, turning them around. IT should provide a transparent picture of projects and short-term plans that are under execution.

Future of work and workforce
1.      Remote work is here to stay – Keep your teams prepared. While some companies may have resumed  office – They still should maintain a Plan “B” & Plan “C”

2.     Keep your employees charged up and motivated – Attrition is a HUGE challenge in such times. Ensure that due attention is given to each employee, from every department.