Technologies have made a major impact on our
lives and also on our working style. We would have never thought
of making our home the office, but today it is a reality. Even
concepts like Small Office, Home Office, Remote Office (SOHORO)
are fast catching up with the advent of cellphones, laptops, and
Internet. One can carry the remote office by just carrying laptop
and cellphone and be in touch with their colleagues whenever they
feel to communicate in spite of holidaying in some remote place.
Efficiency of individuals has increased multi-fold giving one the
flexibility to work for other things simultaneously with the
effective use of the available resources.
Even as professionals explore new products and
new areas, where challenges are galore, the existing job does not
satisfy their appetite after a period of time, in terms of
learning and career growth. The only answer then is job hopping,
which is more rampant in the telecom and IT industries.
The frequency of job hopping has increased with
the growth in telecom and PC densities and has become a subject
of discussion for HRD managers in these fields. It can be mainly
attributed to a gap in demand and supply, internally as well as
externally. Lack of experts in IT & communications field
compels the industry to pay a fat salary which lures individuals
to switch organizations.
In future, it seems job hopping would be more
frequent and more people will leave the organization rather than
joining it at a specific point of time. Should HRD managers look
at job hopping as a problem or take corrective measures in
overcoming it by developing a lean and good organization.
Corporates in the West have tried to reduce job
hopping to an extent by bringing the concept of flexible timing.
To restrict this, it seems the definition of job would be
redefined. People would be called job workers and not employees
for an organization. Professionals would be working under a
contractual agreement whereby after the completion of the work,
their work would be evaluated on the basis of laid-down
parameters and would be paid according to the contract agreement.
With people working as job workers, and not as
employees, they can work for multiple organizations. People can
choose their own timings to work for without bothering about the
official timings. Time wasted by individuals in commuting from
office to home and back can be effectively utilized in doing
something constructive. As administrative work is not to be
performed by job workers, the effective time to work can be
stretched depending upon an individual’s capacity.
In order to clinch the deal, individuals have
to differentiate themselves from others by putting a lot of
creativity and innovativeness. In order to price their services,
they have to take into account the prevailing market dynamics and
price their product accordingly.
With an increase in real estate prices every
year organizations cannot afford to give office space to each of
its employees. A small office can cater to their need as a lot of
administrative costs can be cut down to a sizeable extent.
But money has to be invested in developing the
best communications and networking infrastructure so that people
at remote distances can be connected, and there is free flow of
voice and data without worrying about the bandwidth.
As consultants have to be updated about the
latest developments, they have to attend a lot of training
programmes in different fields leading to opening up of training
institutes specializing in different sectors.
Realizing this scenario will take time but it
is surely going to happen and corporates should be prepared for
it. But before this can happen the state’s telecom
infrastructure should have enough bandwidth to support all the
subscribers in transmitting high quality voice and data. PC
penetration level should increase by leaps and bounds. Even the
Internet bandwidth should be able to support all the subscribers
as job workers would be frequently surfing it for answering their
own queries as well as working enhancing their knowledge base.