As the pandemic has dissociated employee productivity from their physically being present in office, organisations do not expect their office space requirements to grow as fast as their workforce addition in the foreseeable future.
"We may add more people, but it is not necessary that we will increase office space in a similar proportion since we have adopted a hybrid model for our offices which is expected to be the trend in future,” ITC Head of Corporate Human Resources, Amitav Mukherji, told Business Today. The conglomerate has recently approved a hybrid work policy where employees can choose to work from any site other than the office in the base location for two days a week.
Multinational bank HSBC India’s Head of Human Resources Archana Chadha has seen cost efficiencies go up during the pandemic because of hybrid work. “We had to let go of a building. But we didn't have to hire another space. We were able to manage because of our flexible working arrangement.” The firm has begun classifying roles under four categories – office goers, hybrid office, hybrid remote worker or only home worker, which means that employees can decide to come into office all five workdays, 60-80 per cent times, 20-40 per cent times, or work completely from home, factoring in banking regulatory requirements and customer needs.
BigBasket’s workforce has increased 60-70 per cent in the last two years, but the online grocer has not taken up any additional space, according to HR Head TN Hari. “We were thinking of actually of giving up office space very early on, but we held on to it for contractual reasons. So, you don't have to hire new offices, but you don't have to give it up either. Which means that as you grow, you don't your office space requirements will not grow as fast it will not be in proportion.”
This comes as co-working spaces have said they are seeing an increased demand from enterprise clients as well. But ITC doesn’t see the concept fitting into their immediate plans. Mukherji said it is better suited on a short term for organisations with a capacity constraint. “The advantage of a hybrid model with your own office space is that it provides opportunity for colleagues to interact, build on relationships and strengthen social equity.” It is considering changes to its office design as well. For its new offices, like the one coming up in Rajarhat in Kolkata, ITC is looking at more common areas to conduct meetings in twos and threes when employees come to work.
R. Swaminathan, Chief People Officer, WNS, also agrees with Mukherji’s point on real estate enabling culture building, especially among new employees. The business process management firm, another large MNC which so far had large format offices housing 4,000 employees under one roof, will explore the hub-and-spoke model now. “We'll probably look at smaller centres and smaller operations that we can geographically distribute in a given city.” He says they opened at least 7 such small offices in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR during the pandemic.