Commander Subroto Mukherjee, MRICS, MCR, FMP, IGC (Nebosh), MSc (Def & Strat Studies), BSc (Biochem), is a veteran of the Indian Navy, having served 23 years in the white uniform, which includes service onboard 04 Submarines and 07 warships. He is an Alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington; XLRI, Jamshedpur and PSG College, Coimbatore. Amongst his notable tenures can be counted Command of two frontline warships; Chief Instructor at the Naval Academy; Liaison Officer to the Prime Minster of India; first COO of India’s only Tri-Service Command in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands; Fortress Operations & Plans Officer; Command Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer, at HQ Western Naval Command and participation in Kargil Operations – when in Command. He has coordinated multiple naval initiatives with friendly foreign Navies, including the US Navy, Indonesian and Myanmarese forces. He was also a part of two-member, advisory team sent to consult US Marine Corps, stationed in Japan.
Post swallowing the anchor, he has held leadership roles in the Corporate world for the past 13 years, as COO at Synergy Relationship Management Services Pvt Ltd, Head of Marine Operations at Orbit Corporation Ltd. Subroto is presently the Vice President & Head of Administration, Facilities Management & Security for Cipla. In this role, he is responsible for the function across all Factories, Corporate Offices and Sales & Marketing Offices of Cipla.
• What are some of the key strategies implemented by the team for the company in the past year to ensure safety and workplace efficiency?
The past year has been a walk in the dark for everyone globally. An experience, no one had experienced over the past 100 years or more. It’s been a steep learning curve, with little time to think, but at the same time, requiring quick reactions. Frankly, some of these reactions have been instinctive and based on gut feelings, but most have been deliberate, based on correct reading of patterns from disconnected inputs garnered across the world and thereafter, knowing the right thing to do professionally. Seamless collaboration at the leadership levels within the organization, surely helped in rapid implementation and buy-in of plans, processes and policies. To put matters in perspective, the key strategies were:-
• Continuous monitoring of the global health, travel, political and medical horizons, to read and understand how the pandemic was panning and its effects, on the populations it touched.
• Safety, Safety and more Safety – was our primary mantra for employees. We stopped both international and domestic travel weeks before others and closed-down our offices nearly two weeks before the Govt orders. A 100% transition of employees and outsourced associates across all our Corporate & Sales Offices, from a WFO (Work from Office) protocol to WFH (Work from Home) was undertaken seamlessly and within a couple of days of office closure. We also adopted a WFA (Work from Anywhere) protocol by July-August 2020, in a great demonstration of professional ‘Tiki-Taka’ between departments and Senior Leadership. We were amongst the first private organizations in the country to implement protocols like social distancing, temp monitoring, wearing of PPE and conduct of evacuation drills. We were possibly the first to have developed an in-house self-declaration app. Our factories never closed-down, even under the strictest of lock-downs, when the Govt was yet wrestling with the enormity of the pandemic situation and had no related policies in place. Within six months of the pandemic’s arrival at our shores, we understood from experiences worldwide, that the virus transmitted through the air and surfaces were not such a threat. Accordingly, we calibrated our sanitization protocols. By December 2020, we had equipped our office ventilation system trunkings with UVC lights & installed Air purifiers with in-built HEPA filters and UVC lights, to scrub both, the intake and exhaust air and ensure continuous air quality.
• Take the lead but scan others deeds – we initiated what we considered was best for our organization and people, without waiting for others. However, we were agile enough to make timely mid-course corrections based on what organizations around us and in the industry were doing. Our Global Covid Task Force, met everyday, to share developments in our units across the globe. Observe-Learn-Act : was our short and effective action cycle.
• Keep it Simple – was the route taken when under peer pressure to adopt the various new- fangled and expensive equipment, being touted as sure shot Covid – shields. We decided to take the ‘wait and watch’ route to understand the cost benefit ratio of these equipment from organizations that inducted them. Our thought process revolved around the practicalities involving the ability of our outsourced teams on ground to operate these equipment, time taken for their training, time to procurement and installation and most importantly – time and space available to us, in-light of the lockdown and restrictions. The low-cost solutions at hand, seemed more attractive when weighed against these ponderables. In the long run, it turned out to be the right decision.
• What has been the impact of the low-touch economy on workplace design AND operations? Could you share with us what you identify as the short-term fads and long-term trends in this sector?
The enforced low-touch economy has turned out to be a catalyst for leapfrogging the world into the future. ‘Big tech’, MNCs are at the forefront of this ‘Revolution in Corporate Affairs’ (RCA), due to various factors such as large and dispersed people base; availability of huge corpus to effect changes; young and technically savvy workforce and leadership, which is quick to embrace forward looking and digitally driven experiments in business work environment. The RCA is still work in progress everywhere but after nearly two years of the pandemic environment, leaderships across industries, are more or less crystallizing the way they want to shake hands with the future. Depending on the primary location/ type of a business, its quality of people of people base and financial abilities, businesses are at different ends of the RCA spectrum.
Majority of medium and small businesses as well as those into back office operations, are simply raring to get back to the old ways, once the dust settles. On the other hand, the front runners of RCA, who are generally globally dispersed entities, seem to be gravitating towards a common, long-term workplace design ethos. This aims to take advantage of the huge opportunities that the pandemic has thrown up in terms of saying an early hello to the future. The trends basically revolve around the following tenets :-
• People wellness & mental health.
• Collaboration & ideation centers.
• Dispersed working.
• Flexibility.
• Network Centricity.
• Sustainability.
• Security – both physical and IT.
• Compliance – including diversity & inclusiveness.
• Captive Training Centers – operated by Centers of Excellence COEs.
Some popular necessities or even fads if we term them so, are likely to disappear over the next couple of years as the pandemic becomes endemic. As I see it, many health oriented processes like social distancing, daily self-declarations and temperature measurement, will exit as quickly as they entered. Some old-world necessities, which we take for granted, would also fade out: Attendance – work will become output oriented rather than presence oriented, availability of parking space for personal vehicles (will shrink in tandem with improvements in public transportation and reduced need for work travel), ‘Service’ within offices (will become self-service oriented and in-house manpower for such requirements will nearly disappear. Future of service will be IoT driven, personalized, self-service), Fixed personal space and expensive real estate for storage will also be consigned to the bin of the past, as businesses increasingly embrace the benefits of flexibility and digitization. Real estate footprint will be used very judiciously and the quantum of company owned real estate would decrease in most cases, except where treated as an asset base.
• Given the accelerated pace of transformation, what emerging technologies is the industry working with?
Increasingly, the stuff of Science Fiction is entering mainstream business. Advanced algorithms have been in use for some time now as we have witnessed with the likes of Uber, Airbnb and the rest. We have also observed cutting edge and game changing technological innovations in the supply chain side and FMCG customer experience realms, as demonstrated by Amazon, Ali Baba etc.
When it comes to the Real Estate & Office Space industry, we know that these are extremely price sensitive markets and have a comparatively long-term, design board to occupation horizon. Likely disruptions to business and relevance of technology over an acceptable timeline, have a huge bearing when organizations contemplate undertaking retrofitting or upgradation of built work environments. Therefore, we would observe most of the innovations and changes being inducted, either into newly commissioned buildings or when organizations contemplate fitouts of a long lease property. The proven robustness and efficacy of a design or technology is generally a must for it to be inducted and adopted.
For future Offices/ Commercial properties that are being developed as self-contained IT/ITES Parks or the like, the key emerging technology trends include extensive use of IoT, Big Data, Block chain & AI, towards improved :-
• Seamless surveillance.
• Deterrent, access control and security protocols that do not impede flow of traffic.
• Green Building and Sustainability initiatives.
• Inclusivity initiatives.
• Remote monitoring of utilities.
• Remote monitoring of Air Quality.
• Remote gardening.
• Technology based safety initiatives.
• Self-Service.
• Sustainability was a key factor for every company prior to the pandemic; has it now taken a back seat? How are companies working towards balancing sustainability with safety in the post-pandemic era?
The future of humankind is about nothing, if not sustainability. As a species, our unthinking actions to advance technologically and earn greater profits, has led to unmitigated plundering of natural resources, brought about by a consumption driven economy. The resultants are emissions and effluence containing high toxicity pollutants and greenhouse gases – apart from depletion of natural resources. This depredation has ensured that our natural ecosystem has become highly fragile and vulnerable. At this rate, environmental scientists opine that the Earth is now just a few centuries away from becoming uninhabitable. The pace of human depredation has far outpaced nature’s ability to regenerate. Sustainability, that is the sustainability we are referring to here (not business sustainability), is nothing but “avoidance of depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.”
Whilst Governments have long been deliberating these issues, Organizations have lately understood the need to play their part and have included sustainability programs in their business agenda – not the least because of external stakeholder pressure. Increasingly, the drivers are avoidance of
emission related penalties or garnering of benefits announced under various Govt, sustainability initiatives – announced as a means of attaining net zero emissions or a carbon neutral footprint.
We come across a plethora of corporate sustainability initiatives in terms of recycling wastes, reduction of emissions by improving combustion – quality of fuel used and filtration; reducing energy consumption by inducting more efficient equipment and upgrading transmission equipment and power lines; cleaning effluents by efficient filtration and correct disposal methods; using bio-degradable disposable materials in day to day tasks; reducing waste & reducing water consumption. I see no conflicts in managing pandemic related safety, whilst continuing with the ecological sustainability agenda.
However, if we are alluding to business sustainability, then there was and is, definitely a challenge. These challenges have ameliorated to a great extent over the past year, which has also been witness to the collapse and closure of many businesses, including some giants. For once, the clichéd terminology of a ‘flat world’ was there for all to see, as Govt. after Govt. acted in concert to close-down borders to trade and travel. We have even witnessed the hitherto unheard of and strange phenomenon of States within individual countries, acting like individual nations and enacting differing safety regulations and internal border closures. These have, to say the least, further complicated issues. So, whilst internal safety challenges at organizations were quickly handled, the biggest toll to business sustainability has been exacted by the rapidly shifting regulatory framework goalposts, that keep emerging to counter a very resilient adversary to humankind. Public impatience at the prolonged restrictions and loss of earnings, have led to periodic, mass ‘throwing of caution to the wind’, which in turn results in an upsurge in the pandemic. It’s a very fine line to tread and every Govt around the world as well as every business leader, has an unenviable task at hand to just sustain. The one good result of the pandemic is that people have got to spend more time with their families and become less materialistic as they realize the wastefulness of rampant consumerism. Air pollution has reduced due to travel restrictions and people have quickly adapted to a digital and virtual way of working. Road accident fatalities have come down as less people are travelling. So we do see that the enforced regulatory restrictions due to the pandemic and resultant safety concerns, have led to inadvertent championing of sustainability in a major way.
• Can you see any elements in workplace design that will disappear?
Given the learnings over the past couple of years and the maturing of technology and infrastructure across most parts of the globe, we are set to see some major changes in workplace designs as we hitherto know. Not that these will happen simultaneously across borders or industries or even timelines, but they will happen, in the not too distant future. I foresee the following changes in the next 2 to 5 years :-
• HVAC systems will be overhauled to become more expensive and include inbuilt filtration and air scrubbing elements to ensure higher standards of internal air quality. We may see some design changes in facades that encourage natural ventilation, but these may be short lived unless global, air quality & pollution levels are rapidly brought under check.
• Provision of storage spaces for documents and files will all but disappear as government agencies rapidly embrace and acknowledge digitized versions of documentation.
• Provision for large numbers of personal vehicle parking spaces at offices will reduce, in tandem with increasing flexibility to work from anywhere and change in ‘attendance based work culture’.
• Security designs will become more exacting and absolute, with reduced touchpoints of subjective human intervention.
• Wall gardens, atriums and wellness centers will become the norm rather than fads.
• Office internal designs will undergo a metamorphosis to include a mix of high intensity, high information flow, analytical decision making centers (DMC) or ‘War rooms’, waiting and individual work areas, which are connected but have a relaxed and hushed calmness about them. There would also be collaboration and ideation centers and conference rooms, that are completely self-sufficient digitally to connect, project, share or pull data seamlessly from anywhere within the organization or the internet.
• The EPABX / manned telephone operator system will disappear as it loses relevance.
• Serviced foodcourts or cafeterias and in-house stewards / vending machine operators are likely to become roles of the past, as IoT transforms these services into more personalized and digitized offerings.