Jayeeta Biswas: "Time Is a Limited Resource, and Remote Work Helps Us Save It"

Imagining a future that builds on the past

As a child growing up in Asansol, India, Jayeeta saw firsthand how employers, no matter how large, can take care of their employees. Asansol is a town built by the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) - the largest steel manufacturer in the country, where her father worked. In India, it’s not unusual for large public sector companies to build townships complete with all the amenities workers and their families need: hospitals, parks, schools, markets, places of worship, roads, utilities, transport systems, and more.

“It intrigued me to see how an organization took care of its employees and never lost that human touch - even with a workforce of over 62,000 people!” says Jayeeta. “Seeing this principle in action left a lasting impression on me, and it’s one of the primary reasons I decided to pursue a career in people and employee relations.”

Jayeeta now gets to live out that childhood dream of creating an environment where employees are truly valued and looked after. Today, she’s our Employee Relations Manager, an integral part of the legal team, and an advocate for our client’s team members.

No two days look the same for Jayeeta; her role is varied, and each day brings a new set of challenges to overcome. But in short, Jayeeta is responsible for designing compliant processes that improve employee retention and add value to our clients. This includes contributing to Omnipresent’s new products, looking at the complete employee lifecycle, and ensuring that our processes enhance employee experience and retention while mitigating risk from a legal standpoint.

"I find being a part of the legal team very rewarding - they’re a bunch of brilliant and incredibly humble people. And the best thing about my role in Omnipresent is that there are no established boundaries, and every interaction with a new person pushes me to think differently.”

Remote working offers limitless possibilities

In line with Jayeeta's belief that employers play a vital role in creating a better workplace is her conviction that remote working offers limitless possibilities. Always in tune with changing employee needs, Jayeeta’s light-bulb moment happened when she was reading an article about Google employees who started their workday when they boarded the office bus.

"It got me thinking about how much time most of us waste sitting behind the wheels of a car or on a bus when we could do our work perfectly well from home,” she says. “At a previous job, software engineers would walk up to me and say: ‘Why can’t I work from home when all I need is my laptop?’ And they were right."

It also bothered her that employees had to relocate to new cities or even countries because that was the "business need." “What about the employees and their family’s needs?” she asked herself. Thankfully, Omnipresent provides the perfect answer to all those questions. With Omnipresent’s support, a start-up in London can hire someone from Australia living in Brazil, or a software company in Texas can hire someone in India. In other words, organizations are no longer restricted by geography when selecting a candidate - and candidates are free to live and work where they wish.

“For me, remote working equates to ‘time-saving.’ Time is a limited resource, and most employees would rather have the time to spend with family and friends instead of spending a lot of time traveling from one end of the city to the other.”

She adds, "I am an early riser and love to sip my morning tea looking out at the beautiful Vercors mountain range from my balcony. I walk my daughter to school and stop to say "Bonjour..ça va?" to the friendly faces I meet in the farmer's market on the way back home. This slow, wholesome, fresh start in the morning fills me with an incredible amount of energy for the rest of the day. I cannot imagine what my life would be if I were to replace this rhythm altogether because I had to catch the morning bus, tram, or taxi to reach work."

Pushing boundaries and fighting for justice

Outside of work, Jayeeta has many passions. She loves to travel - from villages in France, beaches in Spain, to islands in Greece. Her sense of adventure extends beyond tourism. In a previous organization, she went to an adventure sports center run by Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The offsite was about challenging yourself by facing your fears.

"We camped for three nights and were involved in various activities, including building a raft and being thrown off the boat with a life jacket (I don't know how to swim!). That certainly taught me to treat nature with respect. We also did mountain climbing, and there was only one way down - to jump off it (harnessed, of course - our insurance didn't cover injuries due to adventure sports!). It was an unforgettable place and moment."

In addition to her travels, Jayeeta is passionate about creating a more just world. She likes to write about things happening around her that are wrong. Before putting pen to paper, she conducts extensive research to ensure she has all the facts and relevant data so that her perspective is not coming from a place of bias. Her articles are published online, and she’s very proud that she overcame her initial self-doubt about sharing her thoughts with others.

Being a good, empathetic listener is what makes Jayeeta so good at her job and a true advocate for employees all around the globe.