In the Indian IT sector, majority of the companies give the option of Work From Home (WFH) in emergency cases. For decades, WFH is being practiced in the IT sector, although, only for emergency situation. Most of the companies, especially the big ones, have functioning offices from where majority of the employees operate.
But, despite the fact that majority of the low-level and mid-level execution in IT requires no face to face interaction, WFH for normal days or for long period of time was given no serious thought. The majority of the companies were of the view that productivity would reduce once majority of employees are allowed to WFH for long period of time.
However, the month-long Coronavirus induced lockdown, in which all the IT sector employees are working from home, has forced the management to give WFH a serious thought as their future strategy.
N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS- the crown jewel of India’s 170 billion dollars IT sector, said the company believes that it does not “need to have more than 25% of workforce at our facilities in order to make all the 100% productive.” Pointing out that every employee need not be present in the office all time he said, “I think it’s sufficient that they spend 25% of their time in our offices.”
For the last one month, more than 80 percent of country’s 40 lakh IT employees are working from home, and the companies are facing little problem in carrying out operations. And therefore, the management is considering vacating the costly offices and giving work from home to majority of the employees in the next few years. However, it will never be 100/100 (100 percent employees working from home 100 percent of time) and offices will be required, but lesser number of employees would come to offices for less amount of time.
Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO of TCS, told ET that they are working to “get to a 25/25 model by 2025 and, that is the way in which we (will) build out our future capacity and future infrastructure.”
“It doesn’t really matter (whether it is) 25 or 50. The point is it will never be 100/100 (100% of workforce at office for 100% of the time),” he added.
Given the fact TCS is the undisputed leader of the Indian IT industry, once the company works on the Work From Home strategy, others will follow the lead. In fact, many other companies like Wipro are also considering the idea. “There are a lot of things coming up. Number of debates are happening—do we need the whole workforce coming back or do we need (to allow) employees permanently working from home,” said Wipro chief HR officer Saurabh Govil.
Its companies have been a major driver of corporate office prices in the country. Once Work From Home becomes the culture, the prices of corporate offices would come down. This will also make the IT companies efficient, as the cost of real estate and office operations, which is around double digit of the total expenditure for the most IT companies, can be saved.
The idea of Work From Home for a long period of time was never given a serious consideration as never before such an emergency situation occurred. But after the Coronavirus lockdown of more than a month, most of the companies opted for it. Majority of the companies experienced that they can smoothly run operations even if most of the employees work from home and it is cost effective, environment friendly, too.
“In a natural environment, you would never have experimented at the scale. COVID-19 has forced you to do this for 90/95% of the workforce,” said Sangeeta Gupta, Chief Strategy Office for Nasscom. Whether it will be 25% or whether a more gradual shift, a blended model of work from office and home will be a reality. Once the lockdown is opened, the 170 billion dollars IT sector is headed for major changes in its work culture.