GIGA 3: New Markets, Reduced Costs, Better Technology

SBR 3: KSOIL Work from Home

Date of Submission: 31 January 2017 CEO: Aritra Mazumder

COHORT Name and Group GMBA May 2016 Group Members: Siddharth Garg, Anna Gonzalez,
No. Group 8 Pragya Singh, Nikhil S

SBR 3: KSOIL Work from Home

Problem: How KSOIL should expand its working capacity to maintain the desired
level of service delivery for its clients?

Situation Analysis: Putting his previous experience into play, Edelman

implemented the work from home concept at KSOIL. After initial bottlenecks, the
results were appreciated across the organization. Not only did fixed costs of
operation decrease, this was complemented by the three-fold increase in
employee productivity. However, Edelman was selective in his approach. Only
the high performing employees were given the privilege to work from home. With
the firm expanding rapidly, Edelman proposed to add 31 employees to the home
based work force. This led to a conflict with the firms HR who was concerned
about the disparity in compensation for the employees who worked from home
and employees who worked in the office. The difference in pay was almost three
times and did not go down well with the office-based employees at KSOIL.

Alternatives:
1. Setting of a new office location
2. Encouraging employees to work from home so that additional resources
may be hired within the existing infrastructure
Standard 1. Standard 2. Standard 3. Standard 4.
Alternativ Time to Cost per Efficiency Employee
es Setup employee Satisfaction
(1) Setting up 3 3 1 1
a new office
location
(2) 3 1 3 3
Encouraging
work from
home
Scale: 1 low, 2 middle, 3- high
Group Preference Apart from Aritra all the other team members voted in
favor of expanding the work from employee base.

Evaluation of Alternatives:
1. Setting up of a new office location Although this is the preferred way
forward for most firms when they choose to expand, KSOIL does not have
the luxury of time to do so. Setting up of a new physical location will
require six months of time and will set back KSOILs plans of aggressive.
2. Encouraging employees to work from home The obvious choice for
KSOIL given the current situation. However, the disparity in compensation
given out to employees working from home will continue to pose problems
for KSOILs management whose primary objective is to maintain a healthy
a work culture.

Recommendations:
1. Streamlining the existing work from procedure Although, working
from home leads to an exponential increase in an employees productivity,
there should be a mandate for employees to report to office for a fixed
number of days in week. This way the management can evaluate what
causes the increase in efficiency for employees working from home.
 GIGA 3: New Markets, Reduced Costs, Better Technology
SBR 3: KSOIL Work from Home

2. Fixing the Compensation If the productivity increases by three times

for all employees, then that should be the set KPI for evaluating their
performance. Every employee who works from home should perform at
that level and bonuses can be handed out on performance over and above
that level.

Case analysis of Work from home:

Curse or Boon? |Minutes of the
Meeting
Meeting date | time

Meeting called by Aritra Mazumder Attendees:

Case Analysis Siddharth Garg
Type of meeting Anna Beatriz Gonzalez
Facilitator Aritra Mazumder Pragya Singh
Note taker Nikhil Subramanian Nikhil Subramanian

AGENDA TOPICS

Time allotted | 2hrs | Agenda topic What should KSOIL do to increase

revenue?

Discussion : The discussion began with Anna discussing by stating the

hindrance what client is facing. Siddharth started explaining his previous
experience about how his previous organization handled the work from
home situation. Team started analyzing what is the exact problem faced
by KSOIL and Pragya started noting them down. A list of the problem was
stated and the main issue highlighted by Nikhil was the absence of
defined process. Aritra backed up the discussion with his ideas and
alternatives that could be done, team put forward their ideas about how to
solve the issue. Discussions on various personal experiences with work
from home was stated by each team member.
Siddharth started writing down the case analysis and the team gave their
inputs to the literature. A vote was taken on the alternatives by the
chairperson and then then the recommendation was written
Conclusion: The team decided to streamline the process and fixing the
compensation for KSOIL

Action items Handled by Deadline

Make a SBR document Siddharth
Submit the document Siddharth
 GIGA 3: New Markets, Reduced Costs, Better Technology
SBR 3: KSOIL Work from Home

Observers : Pragya, Nikhil, Aritra, Anna

Special notes: The voting was skewed towards one alternative. Exhibit 4
was used to measure the variance between the home based and office
based employees productivity.
 GIGA 3: New Markets, Reduced Costs, Better Technology
SBR 3: KSOIL Work from Home

Minutes of the Meeting