How people in private organizations justify working online

Farhana Rakshand 

In the private sector, people work under a lot of stress. The reason could be meeting deadlines and quality standards, or following the standard operating procedures. The work is done in great volume by employees at the entry level. The higher-ups under which they work or are hired just to maintain the management and order. Their sole task is to regulate and manage the people and further report to the employers.
Ironically, the whole system in any small or big organization is standing because of the ‘low-level employees. This setup faced a sudden tweak when the lockdown was imposed by Governments in March 2020.
The management must justify their work and existence in the company since their core job was to maintain Excel sheets. Now, most of their tasks are redundant to an extent as workers/entry-level employees are working from home. There is nobody who is managing those employees directly now, the way it used to be in office. For instance, an employee of an IT company must resolve their clients’ IT-related issues. This employee knows how to deal with and resolve such issues since they have been trained or have spent a good time with the company.
Now, the bosses, to ‘manage’, keep sending messages or emails via WhatsApp, company messenger, or email from the beginning till the end of the day, and sometimes, even beyond office hours.
The same culture prevails in schools as well. Teachers are allotted extra work apart from teaching kids. The school coordinators make numerous groups in WhatsApp where they keep sending messages, displaying that they are ‘managing’ the teachers and also justifying their existence in the school.
In such a situation where everyone is working from home and is stressed, the ‘management’ is creating more problems for the employees. They expect them to be at their beck and call all the time. This constant irritant is taking a big toll on teachers’ mental health. They are forced to work even at night by the superiors.
During this lockdown, families, and individuals are anxious and under a lot of unsaid pressure constantly. If Government can take any action in such a dramatic situation where everyone is pushing each other to eat the cake first, then days are not far when everybody would end up in an asylum.
Such actions should be taken seriously and the government should help those who are voiceless in this situation since they might succumb to this long and constant diatribe launched against them.
I hope the Ministry of Education takes some action against such practices where teachers, particularly women, are harassed by the school authorities. Such ornamental roles in schools, who do not do any hard work, but justify their presence as their salaries are high, should be scrapped in my opinion.
I sincerely hope that some steps should be taken for families who are suffering and bearing the indirect torture of the management.

(The author isBangalore based Language trainer and can be reached @ [email protected] )