Should offices reopen? Firms struggle to find a correct answer

The future of white-collar work is hybrid, everybody agrees. But what’s the right balance between remote work and in-office work? No one really knows. Eighteen months into the pandemic and with the prospect of a third wave of infections looming in India, both employees and employers are uncertain what the future really holds for flexible work.

“Today, 97% of Wipro employees are working remotely. But working remotely and working in a hybrid manner are very different things,” said Wipro chief human resource officer (CHRO) Sourabh Govil at a recent Microsoft ExpertSpeak webinar.

Based on the stage of the life they are in, some employees want continued flexibility, some want to come back and others want something in between, he adds. “Flexibility is here to stay. But how do we make that work is something we have to work towards.”

HR heads agree that the workforce that will return is not the same one that left a year-and-a-half ago when the pandemic first broke out. And with new developments cropping up every day in various parts of the world, the nitty-gritties of designing a hybrid model are proving to be more complex than expected.

Also read: How Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google are shifting to hybrid work regimes

While some offices are seeing vaccinated employees return to offices in a few cities like Mumbai and Gurgaon, companies are claiming they are returning out of their own free will.  Other companies are in wait-and-watch mode before calling employees back.

They may be prudent in doing so, given that US giants like Amazon, Apple and Google which had announced back-to-work policies have now postponed their plans with the Delta variant of the coronavirus leading to a surge in infections again.

On the other hand, there is also the challenge of on-boarding employees remotely, especially with hiring picking up. “As many 27% of Wipro’s work force in the last 18 months is new,” said Govil. It is a challenge to get new team members who have never met their team or managers to collaborate even with the best of technologies, he added. “Technology is a key enabler but back to work is also a key requirement. So how to bridge these two in the scale of our organisation is something which we are grappling with.”

Also read: TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HCL to hire 60,000 women employees this year

Meanwhile, employees, too, have sent out mixed signals about hybrid work. “One of the interesting things we found in a study we did is that 74% of employees in India want more flexible work options. But, at the same time, 73% of employees also want more in-person time with their teams. Now how do you balance that? You want to work remotely but you also want in-person time and it’s almost the same percentage,” said Microsoft India’s head of human resources Ira Gupta in the same webinar, referring to a hybrid work paradox in India.

Besides, having become used to some of the benefits of working from home, there is a section of the white-collar workforce that is ready to look for another job if asked to return to office. If India Inc faced a huge challenge in switching to remote work at the pandemic’s outset, it appears that reopening offices is proving to be a much bigger challenge.

Also read: Three IT firms, five private banks led hiring in FY21: CARE Ratings