Chronicle Editor
Davies Ndumiso Sibanda
WITH Covid-19 and working from home, many employers are beginning to face discipline challenges related to employees working from home.
Mary is an accountant and has been authorised to work from home and has been given all the technological support including uninterrupted power supply when there is no electricity. However, on several occasions she has not been reachable arguing there was no power. The employer investigated her problematic behaviour and established that she spends part of her day working at her plot some 20km out of town.
Recently the employer lined up Webinars for the day and after attending two in the morning, she sent a message to say her system was down. A technician was sent to her house only to be told there was no problem with the system but Mary had gone for a funeral.
These are some of the common problems with employees working from home. The starting point is to draw up a comprehensive induction programme for employees who are to work from home. This must cover the meaning of the new normal discipline while working from home, importance of putting a full day’s work and impact of being unavailable to the rest of the team.
Further, the employee’s job descriptions must be rewritten to fit the character of working from home. At the same time, contracts have to be amended to talk to working from home addressing things like hours of work, method of payment, reporting method and many others.
Where there are productivity incentive schemes, these have to be remodelled to talk to the new method and drive productivity. However, the employer has to address labour relations flash points like paying for internet, component of electricity used, space occupied by desk. In many instances, workers are willing to compromise as they will want to do away with the domestic worker and attend to children while working and as such some costs can be offset by flexi-working hours.
Having said all this, an employee working from home can be disciplined using the code applicable to the organisation for any misconduct that breaches the workplace rules that are implied and express. There is no change in how the employees have to be treated.
Employers and workers have to quickly attend to areas of potential problems. One of the best means to get the workers to account is having daily Webinars in the morning where everyone reports on work of the day and put milestones for reporting along the day and get end of day reports.
Having a disciplined team working from home is a journey we are all going through, a learning curve and as such adjustments to procedures, rules and processes have to be made until the whole process works effectively. It is a culture change process. People who were used to working around other colleagues now have to work with children and spouses around and not to mention neighbours and visitors who also want attention. Many workers will struggle to adjust and manage all those hence the need for the employer to periodically engage in brief staff development programmes related to working from home. This helps build discipline in employees, thus avoid the use of the code of conduct, which can be punitive and soil labour relations.
In conclusion, workers are struggling with change thus they need the employer’s support as they go through the change so as to be disciplined while working from home as they used to do while working from the office.
Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on: email: [email protected].
Online Reporter