Post-Covid world, work from home to continue

Not just IT companies but firms across services sector are attributing the scenario to cost and productivity gains

Experts also believe that the shift to work from home for majority of employees will be a blessing for women who are not able to continue with their careers because of family commitments.

TCS COO N G Subramaniam says it is expecting to have only 25% of its staff work from offices by 2025

Mumbai  27.04.2020

When the Covid-19 pandemic came ashore and moves like lockdowns were being deliberated upon, the $180-billion IT sector faced a huge challenge for business continuity. More than a month into it, industry executives feel it has been a blessing in disguise and will lead to a larger number of people to work from home in the post coronavirus world. They attribute the emerging scenario to cost and productivity gains out of WFH (Work From Home) and it is not just the IT sector which is reaping the benefits. Companies across the services sectors, including banks, are set to have fewer people work from the offices in the future.

At present, many employees travel long distances to workplaces in cities plagued with traffic issues and high air pollution. Largest software exporter TCS’s chief executive and managing director Rajesh Gopinathan explained that over the decades, IT companies’ model was based on employees trooping-in to cubicles often in specially erected or hired campuses for work, but the lockdown resulted in a quick shift to the WFH model.

Keshav Murugesh, chief executive of business process management player WNS and former chairman of IT industry lobby grouping Nasscom, said the association responded to the challenge by helping its members transport over 25 lakh desktops from offices to associates’ residences within a fortnight, which ensured work can continue. Once they started working from home, companies are seeing gains on costs as well as efficiencies, and now, business leaders are certain that fewer people will be manning the cubicles spread across campuses. “WFH is working extremely well. With the kind of efficiencies that we have started delivering on WFH, there will be a significant impact in the longer term,” Murugesh said, stating that in the future, a higher percentage of people will be working from home than pre-Covid days.

Such a shift will be a blessing for women who are not able to continue with their careers because of family commitments, as they can continue devoting some time for work, Murugesh said, pegging the total number of such possible beneficiaries in millions. In a recent interaction, TCS’s chief operating officer N Ganapathy Subramaniam said the company is expecting to have only 25 per cent of its staff work from offices by 2025, though it was not clear when the company decided on the target.

“We are seeing that our team is able to handle the transaction volumes. At the same time, we are seeing that the productivity, the velocity, the throughput of work has significantly increased. I do not believe that the gains will be lost. There will be a lot more to gain in this new model,” he said. “… we don’t believe that we need to have more than 25 per cent of our workforce at our facilities in order to make all the 100 per cent productive. That is one great realisation. We don’t believe that every employee needs to be present all the time in our offices,” Subramaniam added.

The company has ensured that 90 per cent of its 3.55 lakh people working in India have been able to work from home in a secure manner. However, the industry’s wishes cannot easily get transformed into practice, Murugesh said, pointing to the BPM (Business Process Management) industry’s peculiar demands if a large portion of staff were to work from home. PTI