News: For most companies, WFH is here to stay-08-04-2020
Updated On: Apr 10, 2020,
GURUGRAM: As uncertainty looms over the extension of the lockdown, many corporate organisations, especially those in the service sector, plan to ask their employees to continue working from home even if some restrictions are lifted on April 14.
“While earlier a few people within organisations had apprehensions over the productivity taking a hit due to employees working from home, such doubts have been cleared during the lockdown. Consequently, most organisations are likely to extend the arrangement at least till the end of April,” said Maneesh Menda, head HR, RBS India. He added that at RBS, they have seen the work-from-home option working smoothly and they will continue it for a few more weeks.
Many organisations that TOI spoke with also felt that the work-from-home arrangement is here to stay. Viral Thakker, Partner, Deloitte says that the service sector has had to quickly modify their ways of working. A number of IT/BPM companies and Global Capability Centers were initially caught off-guard where only a small proportion (30–40%) of their employees was enabled for remote delivery (often limited by customer requirements).
Even across BPOs where remote working isn’t preferred, companies are now working around models to make it sustainable. “As of today, Teleperformance has deployed around 120,000 interaction experts on a work-at-home model, which represents nearly 50% of the production force. Efforts to further expand this number will continue and the group targets to achieve 66% by mid-April,” said a spokesperson at the Gurugram-based BPO.
Most organisations are also not in favour of putting their employee’s health at risk and would continue with the remote working option anyway. “Given that the security of our team is the highest priority, we are likely to defer the re-opening of the office to April 30. Re-opening, when done, will be per government guidance and assessment of local conditions. We have a defined protocol in place to re-open the office which includes measures towards enhanced sanitation, social distancing within the office and the guidelines for use of shared spaces in the office,” said a Snapdeal spokesperson.
Vinod Sood who is regional chair for Nasscom and managing director at Hughes Systique says that while the companies await directions from the government, they are certain that companies will not immediately ask all its employees to return to office. “Barring the critical function where the employees have to be in the office, we are certain that a chunk of the workforce will be asked to work from home across organisations,” said Sood.
