Tech majors, start-ups and consulting firms are turning to flexible/ hybrid work model in a phase-wise manner, easing out gradually from the complete work from home, which the pandemic had brought in its wake. Several corporates and company employees Business Today spoke to said that the managements have not put a complete pause on the WFH (work from home) mode and are allowing the employees to work from office on several days of the week.
As compared to many start-ups which have announced work from anywhere options for the workforce since past few weeks, big corporates have been calling employees back to their office locations and, in several cases, the localised centres in small cities.
India’s second largest corporate, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with over 5.5 lakh workforce, told Business Today in response to a query over the next few months, the company will be calling employees back to their offices.
“As the situation with respect to COVID-19 improves across the globe and now that majority of our associates and their families are vaccinated, we are transitioning into a hybrid mode of working, with our associates choosing to spend time at both, office premises and working remotely. We will be getting our employees back to offices in the coming months. We are already starting to encourage our associates to return to their respective offices. Senior management level executives have started working from offices regularly. Our offices around the world are following all social distancing and COVID-19 protocols, implemented around the beginning of the pandemic, and are extremely safe for employees to work out of,” a TCS spokesperson said.
The company says that it remains committed to adopting 25X25 model which will give 25 per cent of associates to work from an office at any given point in time, and they need not spend more than 25 per cent of their time in the office.
“But an important part of the journey to the 25/25 model is to first bring people back to physical offices and gradually transition into the hybrid work model,” TCS added.
Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys, as per several employees BT spoke to, has started calling employees back to work twice a week who are already in office locations in its phase 1 part. The company will then follow with the outstation employees who will be asked to report to office locations in these areas.
An Infosys spokesperson did not comment when BT reached out stating that the company has entered a silent period.
Noida-headquartered HCL Tech, which has an employee base of 1.97 lakh, continues to operate in WFH mode.
“At HCL, one of our top priorities is the safety and well-being of our employees and their families. We also remain deeply committed to maintaining our business normalcy thereby ensuring uninterrupted services to our clients. At present we are monitoring the situation and continue to operate in a hybrid model,” as per the company's spokesperson.
Meanwhile global consulting firm, Deloitte, as per its employees, is calling employees to office for key projects, training sessions and is operating on a 100 percent home-office model.