Strategies used by organisations to increase the productivity of business managers in I.T. during Work from home

According to Chi (2021), crisis management in business includes the recovery of liquidity flows by effective financial management. Considering the fact that the degree of involvement of the managers of the I.T. firms ensures the degree of success in crisis management, several MNCs in the I.T. firms introduced anonymous surveys of the employees, higher management, consumers and other stakeholders of the business (Beham et al, 2011). The key purpose of the surveys was to understand the managers’ degree of involvement and the associated loopholes. The employees were surveyed to understand the soft skills and effective team management skills demonstrated by the manager’s consumer’s survey was conducted in order to understand the operational skill and performance of the team leaders and managers to meet the client’s demand. Based on the results, strategies to enhance the productivity of the management are taken. For instance, organisations like Hyperlink infoSystem, DataArt and BJSS have initiated virtual soft skill enhancement sessions for managers to enhance their people management skills and higher productivity. Qian and Fan (2020) have added that excessive attrition from the end of the employees of I.T. firms were taking place due to conflict between managers and employees, and it was resulting in deterioration of the productivity of the managers, enhancement of soft skills to retain employees did improve the productivity of the business managers. The key soft skills focused on included communication skills, cultural competence, understandability, empathy, persuasive attitude and critical decision-making abilities. The managers’ soft skills not only helped them to enhance team productivity and prevent attrition, but also helped them to enhance client retention through effective communication.

Poudel et al. (2020) have highlighted the effectiveness of conflict management skills of the managers to ensure their own enhanced productivity along with the productivity of the team members. A significant number of It firms, during the work-from-home scenario, are undergoing a high level of employee dissatisfaction due to frequent conflicts between team members as well as team members and management (Kramer, 2020). Since face-to-face communication between colleagues and leaders is not taking place, information is often misinterpreted, resulting in conflict. Debata, Patnaik and Mishra (2020) have added that since several team members are not aware of each other’s culture and are working remotely, a lack of interpersonal bonding can be evidenced. This, in turn, results in a conflict situation and thus reduces the productivity of the employees as well as managers. Therefore effective conflict management can not only save the time and productivity of the employees and managers. Effective conflict management skills are therefore highly crucial for employees. According to Chetty et al. (2020), effective conflict management skills help managers increase their productivity by preventing a conflict situation from getting critical or by handling a critical conflict within a limited time.

Another major strategy that has been opted by the management for enhancing the productivity of the organisation includes strengthening the virtual communication process. According to Brinca et al. (2020), in several developing nations like India, China, Srilanka and others, a significant number of employees were unable to work from home due to a lack of effective access to the internet. Several MNCs and local I.T. firms, to enhance the productivity of the employees, invested in ensuring high-speed internet facilities for the employees working from home. Her team managers acted as a facilitator who helped the company develop an awareness of the number of employees who require internet facilities and how the provision of internet facilities will benefit the organisation (Kramer, 2020). High-speed internet faculties not only strengthened the team but also acted as a major help for managers. Managers were able to conduct the necessary video conferences required to discuss plans with the employees (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The communication between the team members and managers got enhanced to a great extent. This, in turn, resulted in an enhanced level of productivity of the managers as well as the team members as a whole.

2:8 Chapter Summary

From the above literature review, it has been found that till now highly limited amount of researchers on the factors that may influence the productivity of business managers working from home during the COVID-19 Pandemic has been done majority of the researchers that has been conducted are on the employees. When it comes to managers of the I.T. sector, a further lower amount of research on the managers of the firms has been found. Thus, this research has been conducted to close the gap detecte