Work from home: The new culture in the making

Work from home: The new culture in the making

WFH will stay relevant in the long run as we start gauging possibilities

Shekhar Mhaskar

As a matter of fact, WFH had been instituted in Isobar almost a year ago considering the various needs of the employees and to give them a fair chance to strike a balance between personal and professional life. That was a different purpose then, vis-à-vis a forced requirement during this current pandemic. So, in a way, we were able to segue into this WFH comfortably.

Learning from our offices in the orient, we began working from home a week before the country went into lockdown. Just overnight, the machines of the creative teams were shipped to their homes; remote access to our network was enabled; online meeting platforms were made accessible to all, and so on and so forth. All this to ensure that work continued as usual without any interruption.

Contrary to popular belief in India, I think WFH has worked really well for us. Efficiency and productivity have reached new heights. Teams and clients from different cities are working more cohesively and in an integrated fashion busting the myth that they always need to be in the same room to be more effective. They are now able to utilise the time they save on travel, to attend to personal commitments or office work. They have become more responsible and productive, the proof of the pudding being in the heightened outcome we have seen in the last two months or so. Brainstorms, discussions, research surveys, pitches, and everything that drives success for the agency has seen a new gleam during this WFH phase. It is not just the internal teams, but also our clients and vendors who have contributed to the success.

During this time, we have in fact won a couple of accounts and executed some noteworthy campaigns. The account wins will be out there in the media soon. One of the campaigns that stand out is the one we ran for Kia Motors India. We used existing video rushes in an interesting way to create a film that is just apt for the current situation. It inspires everyone and instils hope for a better future. Have a look here.

In my humble opinion, WHF would continue for us as the lockdown gets lifted in phases and as the authorities would allow only a percentage of the staff to attend office. It would also stay relevant in the long run as we start gauging possibilities of people in certain functions to work from home while others who are more client-facing to work from office or those who are needed on a film set to be at an outdoor location. Or, maybe we look at some sort of rotation of staff. All this is going to be quite a fluid evolution as we move into the future. 

(The writer is chief growth officer at Isobar. The views expressed are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them)