Home Office, anyone ???
The life in this island is getting too difficult. The rising flames of the war and ever increasing oil charges are screwing the people. Today, coming to Colombo has become the worst nightmare to anyone. The number of checkpoints and barriers has doubled the traffic jam and virtual it takes two hours to travel 20 kms. Even if you could afford this journey by paying 100 bucks for 1 ltr of petrol, what is the use when you have to park your vehicle 10 kms away from your office due to security reasons? (You guys at WTC have tasted this better, nah?) Public transport was always a chaos from the past and today people who opt to travel in a bus or in a train should have real guts. Every little noise excites the passengers and if you are to carry big baggage you are always under suspicion (not only that, today pregnant mothers are also under suspicion.)
With the current situation I don’t think many employers who works in the capital have the peace on mind to concentrate purely on their work. They always have to work under doubt and extra pressure. This situation will decrease the efficiency and cut the room for any innovation. Our trained and qualified workforce is not that plenty and if we are to single life, it’s a major lost to our whole country. That’s why terrorists keeps their targets on civilian workforce, thus break the backbone of country’s economy.
In this situation I personally think Home Office concept should be put into practice. Currently I think we have enough infrastructures to do so. Home PC with necessary software and ADSL line would be adequate for most of the service based work and also we could get the best use of free online tools such as Basecamp, Skype, Google Calendar and etc.
Hope our CEOs will have a consideration on this and move the country forward tactfully in this gloomy period.
- 18th June 2006
- Life, Office, Sri Lanka, Web 2.0
- Comments (5)
Comments
at 9:00 pm
Get smashed, fucked then fall over and get out of the country, who cares about your pathetic moralising and peace - With enough drugs and booze any country can be a paradise including this one….
at 10:21 pm
Couple of reasons home office never works in Sri Lanka.
1. Sri Lankan never works without supervision hanging on the head. But this is not a major issue, because most of the people really do not do anything that much productive even in the office anyway.
2. //have enough infrastructures to do so// I do not agree. We have very weak ADSL connection only inside Colombo bubble. SLT phone connection cost 19,750 minimum – when phone connection charge Free in Sri Lanka.
ADSL monthly free (512/128) 2250 Rs when it cost 1495 Rs in US for 768/128kbps line. But we all know ADSL line at day time goes down to dial up speed. Please note, Colombo is not Sri Lanka. Colombo is just an imaginary bubble.
3. Phone connection is too high in Sri Lanka
4. Phone bill too high in Sri Lanka
check the price comparison chart US vs SL at http://unprotectedthoughts.com/2006/06/price-comparison-sri-lanka-vs-america.html
5. For all the workers connect to the central office server, office need pretty good bandwidth. 512kbps line cost 160,000 per a month in Sri Lankan and 30Mbps line cost 4499 Rs per a month in US.
6. The main concern of any workers in Sri Lanka is making some extra money – anyone capable tries their best to make something extra other than salary. As soon as boss give up control of the time – every one give first priority to their private business.
7. Our works need authority figure for job satisfactory. Tougher the boss is, more satisfy we are. Once this connection loosens up, we start disrespecting the boss.
8. For telecommuting, every worker needs good knowledge in the product/service there are doing all the way to the final consumer. And also should be able to take the responsibility and should be able to self manage. ‘Responsibility’ this is something we do not have in our culture.
9. Life is cheap in Sri Lanka. Technology is expensive.
10. War is not the main course in Sri Lanka. More people die on the road every year. But we do not think of telecommuting still because we know it cost more.
By the other hand my suggestion is not telecommuting, but keep the Negambo lagoon free and open for everyone and also make some shades over embassy lines.
at 7:30 am
I disagree. I’ve been telecommuting and doing freelance for a while now and I belive its the right way to go.
I don’t believe this will come from companies to push workers to homes. This has to come from us. Ditch the companies and try to make it on your own. You’ll be suprised how productive and dedicated you become when you don’t know where or when your next paycheck comes from.
Telecommuting is possible today with home adsl, Internet cafes and WIFI its minimal but possible.
at 12:42 pm
I agree with you it would be so good for SL companies and safe for a majority of the working population.But, sorry to mention that such changes in SL take a life time to catch on that by the time companies come around to implement it, it would be to late. But your thinking is JIT (just in time).
On another note STL and other ADSL providers will have to get their act together so that we would be able to actually use technology than having to wait and wait and waste time and money for even a page just to download. The internet connection is so slow and bad is SL that most people I know feel it would be better to phone or even go in person than to send an e-mail to get something done. Although employees in the private sector use e-mail and the internet more frequestly it’s going to take a while before the public sector utilizes this technology to communicate with the public. I am looking forward to this day as it would help our Amazing country develop in leaps and bounds in such a short time.
All is possible with PEACE and I pray for it always!
at 10:54 pm
I think with regards to software industry this would be possible. There are a few companies who do do this (one I personally know wants ppl to spend a minimum specified time at the office so that the meetings happen regularly). With regards to other offices, we havent still stepped into that scale yet.
In most of the government offices, I really dont think that the physical filing has still gone off regardless of the number of computers introduced. But then again even if you do go totally e, you can only do so much. Its not only the filing that happens in a department.
And as for this ADSL thingy, ADSL is slow only in colombo. I live in Moratuwa and its quite fast here at day time. (In fact its fastest at day time), the reason being there aren’t many offices over here who want to get connected through ADSL and also there aint being many users.
By the way are there any examples of ‘home office’ except in cases of software and related IT companies? Just being curious.