The social media goddess has delivered a blow to the red-tape asura in Bengal. ...One can’t resign, ask for leave or send office work on WhatsApp

Joydeep Thakur, HT, Kolkata | Oct 14, 2016: WhatsApp has emerged as a new tool of governance with state government employees forming WhatsApp groups to issue and receive instructions and exchange information related to planning and day-to-day administrative work.

Directives, circulars and notices are being sent to ground-level staff right from meeting rooms through these groups. Orders that took hours, and sometimes days, to reach the employees concerned are now landing up in seconds, putting the entire administrative process into top gear.

“Passing information to different levels of the administration through WhatsApp groups has become very popular in many departments. This is especially helpful for the police, PWD, and municipalities, which have regular public interaction. It is also helping in inspection. Photographs are being taken and uploaded instantly, saving a lot of time,” a top state government bureaucrat said.

Officials at every level of the administration are members of one or more groups, which work in the form of concentric circles with the innermost groups comprising the top-level bureaucrats and the outermost ring comprising ground-level staff.

In the districts, top-level groups usually comprise the district magistrate, additional district magistrate, subdivisional officer and other nodal officers of various departments and programmes — like minority affairs, MGNREGA, Nirmal Bangla, among others. SDOs and BDOs have their own groups that go up to the joint block development officer level. The BDO group comprises members of the panchayats.

“As soon as the government comes up with an order or needs to send some information to the lower-level, the DM uploads the message in his group with a snap of the government circular. The SDOs and BDOs — part of that group — simply forward the messages to their respective groups and it trickles down to the lowest-level. Work starts almost immediately,” an SDO of Nadia said.

With the Mamata Banerjee government stressing on providing service to the people in a time-bound and result-oriented manner, this WhatsApp-based system has come in handy and has not only reduced the time-lag but also minimized the gap between top and ground-level officials. It is also very effective for short-notice operations — like evacuation of people before floods.

“An officer may not be at his or her office all the time to check mail but almost every one of them has a smart phone and WhatsApp to check things out at any time,” another official said.

Also, if a ground-level official needs to pass information about an awareness campaign or an event in a village to the seniors, one may just click photos and post them in the group that reaches the top-level officers within seconds.

“Village-level entrepreneurs, who are basically ground-level data entry operators, have been provided smart phones and 3G SIMs. Their job is to upload data and pictures from the ground-level so that these can reach senior officials within seconds,” a joint BDO of South 24-Parganas said.

Don’t use WhatsApp to ask for leave or send office work, companies tell staff

Himani Chandna, HT, New Delhi | Aug 11, 2016: One can’t resign, ask for leave or send office work on WhatsApp, human resource folks at popular companies are telling employees.

Companies are discouraging the use of WhatsApp for office communication, saying the instant messaging app owned by Facebook can only remain an informal and unofficial mode of interaction. They fear losing sensitive data because of loopholes in the app.

With over a billion global users, a tenth of that in India, WhatsApp has to put its weight behind enterprise communication with features that allow users to create groups, and share videos and documents. It promises “end-to-end encryption” of all data shared over the platform.

But most companies are not convinced.

“Companies have no control over information that employees have in their WhatsApp account, especially after they left the organisation. If an employee loses her phone, the app can be misused,” said Rituparna Chakroborty, co-founder of staffing firm Teamlease Services.

Besides, employees think the app is an intruder, especially when somebody is on leave.

“Managers expect an immediate response to queries on WhatsApp (if the message is read). That’s unfair and we are undertaking sensitisation drives among employees and managers … The app is not an official channel of communication,” said Biplob Banerjee, executive vice-president, human resource, at Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd, the operator of Dunkin’ Donuts and Domino’s Pizza in India.

Banerjee, however, uses WhatsApp to send short and crisp videos on company policies to the employees.

Apart from Jubilant, Adidas India, Amway India, Hero Cycles, and RPG Group are firms that have introduced office policies on WhatsApp.

Some firms are stricter. Adidas has mentioned in its social media policy that SMS and other mobile messaging tools cannot substitute an official channel, such as mails.

“We encourage employees to use internal communication and messaging platforms for work-related interactions. WhatsApp can’t be that,” said Arijit Sengupta, senior HR director, Adidas Group India.

The companies think WhatsApp may never become an official communication tool as it is not connected to a company’s server, like in the case of emails and several enterprise chat apps.

“If used irresponsibly, it could lead to a grapevine of communication and gossip, wasting employees’ time,” said a Hero Cycles spokesperson.

Shantanu Das, head of HR at Amway India, believes WhatsApp can be an efficient tool if used moderately.

“It enhances team-bonding, and breaks barriers of hierarchy, gives liberty to an executive to share his views with the senior leadership in a free and frank way,” he said