Work from anywhere

IF YOU’RE given the freedom to move around, sit anywhere you want in the office, work from anywhere, even in the cafeteria, would you abuse that privilege? How, as an employer, would you be able to monitor what members of your staff are doing?

Ever since they moved into their new headquarters in Shah Alam, Selangor, in July this year, DiGi Telecommunications employees have not had fixed seating, and there are no cubicles, not even for the bosses. The office adopts an open concept whereby tables are laid out across an open area. Employees can choose to work at a workstation or on their own notebooks. They can even plonk themselves in any of the other levels or departments. With wireless technology, communication is no problem.


Adzhar Ibrahim: ‘In terms of the contingencies of life, everybody has the same needs, everybody falls sick, and everybody needs time off for vacation.’
“It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” said Adzhar Ibrahim, director of human resource development. “Do you trust people first and hope that they return the trust, or do you say, you prove to me that you’re trustworthy and I will trust you? I think our philosophy is that, ‘Hey, you’re a decent person and we will trust you.’ If it becomes a problem, then we’ll deal with it.

“But surprisingly, I don’t think we’ve had any issues of people running away or not working. You can’t hide. Where are you going to hide? And if you need to read the newspaper, you can go ahead and read it. But on the other hand, if you read the newspaper the whole day, everybody will see. So there is some peer pressure.”

Adzhar related an incident whereby a group of senior management staff visited the building, and one of the employees was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper.

“We walked by and she didn’t even look up!” he laughed. “That was so remarkable, because in other organisations, even if you deserve a rest after working long hours, the moment you see your boss, you will quickly get back to work. The assumption is that if you are here reading the newspaper, you have a good reason for doing so. You don’t have to explain.”

He admitted that the system is not perfect, and there will always be a few who will take advantage of it. He said the decision was whether to have rules that cater to a small minority but inconvenience everyone else, or to have rules for the majority and deal with the minority on a case-by-case basis.

The DiGi headquarters, known as D’House, is the physical manifestation of the company’s idea of a “flattened organisational structure.” There is no physical differentiation between the workspace of a head of department and those under him or her. In fact, Adzhar proudly proclaimed that all employees share the same benefits, regardless of position.

“Our main argument is that in terms of the contingencies of life, everybody has the same needs, everybody falls sick, and everybody needs time off for vacation,” he said. “Many women will get pregnant. So we don’t want people to differentiate each other based on their benefits.”

He said the move from the old to the new was quite drastic, after identifying the good and the bad in the company. Things like communication barriers and silo thinking were eliminated.

“Along the way, we pushed the boundaries so far that we ended up in pretty unknown territory,” he said.

The building, with its wood, steel and glass design, has an ultra-modern look, as does the interior with flowers and paintings almost everywhere.

“We had a Family Day a few days ago,” he added. “I have two teenage children, and they said ‘This is cool, I don’t mind working here.’ Teenagers! They don’t agree with me on anything, yet they think the place in which their father works is cool!”

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/1/2/lifeliving/16327908&sec=lifeliving