Work from Home (WFH) has mixed experience for the buying professionals and though it was a saviour during the lockdown period, but now when there is no lockdown and vaccination is in full swing, nearly all the buying houses and liaison offices have opened offices, and a majority of the buying community don’t see WFH as a very feasible option in the long term. Yes, hybrid model/flexible working is something a chunk of buying/liaison offices are working on or exploring.
Thanks to ensuring safety by remaining at home, saving of transportation time and option of working in flexible timings, productivity of some of the professionals has definitely increased during WFH. Working for them has been easy and they have been able to focus on their work as they are working in isolation. However, on the other hand, most agree that coordination has not been easy for many professionals due to poor phone and network connectivity in their areas. Touch and feel of the material, easy coordination, one-o-one mutual discussion and good engaging working culture… are the major reasons which motivated professionals to come back to the offices.
Professionals believe that project management, task management, communication and scheduling tools help make remote working efficient and effective and compensate to some extent for the remote working disadvantages. E bookings, virtual showrooms, team meetings played a crucial role as well during WFH.
To overcome the challenges, with the global chain collapsing in terms of couriers, shipping services, a lot of new and alternate SOPs were implemented and initiated by various buying houses and liaison offices.
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Working in office is more motivating
Experts believe that WFH has several tangible and intangible benefits worthwhile to mention like saving on costs, more productivity, easier recruitment and retention. However there is an increased level of disadvantage that WFH also brings in like lack of community interaction and team work. Lack of motivation and unmonitored performance lead to either low productivity or a complete burnout for some employees as they fail to set work and leisure boundaries.
“There are issues with WFH. The process of ‘work’ is not as good in WFH as it used to be while working from office. Maintaining the spirit of teamwork across all the departments is very difficult in WFH. No doubt, there is a struggle in getting work to come back on track as it was during pre-Covid times when even a designer visited factories regarding value-addition activities and allied coordination and it may take a few months to get everything back to normal, but the target is to bring the team back into office. Recognising certain advantages, we are working on few flexibilities in terms of working so that people can enjoy WFH in case of need,” says Jyoti Saikia, MD, Triburg, Gurgaon. Working with many top brands and retailers, Triburg is India’s most respected buying house.
Alpana Razdan, GM, India & Bangladesh, Falabella, Gurgaon highlights some very strong points and says, “Major concern areas were technical and design. Having clarity in terms of colours, design and fit was of utmost importance not just for the clients but also in long term to build confidence between the buying teams and the sourcing chain. I am a firm believer of welcoming change and adapting to new global scenarios .It gave us a possibility of implementing new source ng strategies and building better and faster route for our global souring chain.” Falabella is a Chile-based well-respected multinational chain of department stores.
“Apart from the technical aspects and differences of working in offices and WFH, I must say that professionals don’t enjoy working from homes. There are different types of challenges, which are underplayed, as at home, space is limited, kids are there, network issues prevail… and even if there are no such issues, there is no joy of working, as in office, where there is an atmosphere of proper working, set timing and learning. The system and overall infrastructure you have in offices can’t be available at home,” reasons Anchal Kansal, Director, Indsource International, Gurgaon. Having specialisation in home and lifestyle products, Indsource International is a well-known buying house.
Few liaison offices still not open completely
The experience of liaison offices is almost similar to that of the buying houses as professionals of liaison offices also faced challenges of long working hours and missed the touch, feel aspects of fabric and garments. To ensure full safety, some of the liaison offices have still not opened completely. Professionals of M&S told Apparel Resources that they are going to offices on a roster system; similarly, staff of C&A are also going on and off to the office. “With difficulties in coordination, not having touch and feel of samples/products, WFH leads to delay in decision making which is a major challenge,” told a senior professional of a leading liaison office who does not wish to be quoted.
Reflecting on what most liaison offices say, Mridula Lal, Country Manager, Indiska, Gurgaon avers, “Total WFH is not possible. A hybrid model is workable but not sustainable in the long run in our industry as we need to work closely with the product. The only two departments that could work from home for a longer period are logistics and finance.”
In this context, Arjun Puri, Director-KAS Group Asia, Gurgaon underlines that the industry doesn’t have all the answers yet. “We have befriended collaboration in technology in ways like never before and there is no going back. However, as we transition to hybrid work strategy, it is important for leaders to realise that we don’t have all the answers yet. We need to figure out over time which working model works best for our employees and our businesses in the longer-term,” he says.
Arjun also believes that for some roles in sourcing, 100 per cent WFH is possible (graphic design, IT, capacity management, tech pack creation etc.) but for a large number of roles working remotely isn’t possible. “We need to try and not think of remote working options as ‘book ends’. There will be a middle ground which will help balance personal and professional needs. Not all work needs to be done from office and that has been proven,” he says.
Working hours a concern in WFH
Many professionals were of the opinion that maintaining defined and structured work hours is very difficult. Working from home is an issue for both the professionals and the organisation. “It was easy for me to support my family during WFH, especially my kids as I can manage few minutes or in some cases one or two hours from my working hours. I compensated this time and completed by working as per my convenient time but now as I am going to office, I can’t have this leverage but at the same time now working is mostly limited to office hours while earlier at home I had to work for more hours also,” shares a young female team leader of a Noida-base buying house who doesn’t wish to be quoted.
Preferable to have HR professionals in office
While many believe that HR role can be handled from home, the views from the industry are contrary to the belief. “Recruiting and defining salary are the two core jobs of any HR professional. Depending on the organisation, they have some other job roles also. For recruitment, one has to appear physically and meet HR so HR can check, evaluate his overall personality, body language, etc. This is not possible by sitting at home. Similarly for salary, PF, ESI and other allied work, HR has to maintain record. For this, they may need to visit some other offices also. In few exceptional cases, they can have a little share of their profile at home,” says Vishal Dhingra – President – Speciality Merchandising Services, Noida. The company is a global merchandise sourcing organisation.
Inspections need to be on-ground
Inspections and quality assurance are preferably on-ground tasks. Anchal argues that as quality is a prominent issue, apart from the increasing number of styles, more focus on value addition, touch and feel of the product… online inspection is not very fruitful and it is more applicable when factory visit is not possible. Not only top leaders of the buying industry, but also senior and mid-level professionals share that they are happy to cautiously come back to offices. “Inline and midline inspection can be managed online but for final inspection, we have to be in the factories,” tells a QA manager of Delhi-NCR based liaison office on the request of anonymity. It is also a strong perception that online inspection is overall not credible compared to physical. Technical glitches are also there in online inspections.
“Apparel and textile business specifically the sourcing end of the business will always require personal attention and has a lot to do with the visual senses. Team work is best accomplished when all members work collectively towards a common goal. On a personal front I do believe flexibility is the key rather than WFH and post Covid this would be a wonderful direction to move in,” concludes Alpana.
Inspections were done remotely and most vendors were on self-inspections mode for the whole of last year. It also moved responsibility back to the vendor and it was a refreshing and welcome change to see how the entire vendor matrix really stepped up to the challenge.
Not only buying professionals in India even their overseas clients are also not very much comfortable or happy with the overall WFH experience but realising the situation at ground level, they have not insisted on anything in this regard.
It is a strong perception that working hours definitely increased in WFH but not the productivity and output. Everybody felt that he or she is working more but overall output has not been as it used to be in office earlier.
Compared to any other department, logistics is the only department that can comfortably work from home as it requires very limited coordination with other departments.
