Some love it and few not as much but the great disruption to the work culture as we knew it — Covid-induced work from home— is coming to an end, finally. The information technology services sector, which was the quickest to adopt remote working when the pandemic hit is slowly opening up, with employees returning to offices.
According to a recent report by the industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) and job portal Indeed, both employees and employers are eager to return to the workplace but in a hybrid model.
With the start of 2022, over half of the workforce will be working from the office for at least three days a week according to the Nasscom Return to Workplace Survey. As many as 70% of the companies surveyed preferred hybrid model; it also found that IT services and global capability centres are likely to the early adopters of the long-term hybrid work model.
India’s largest IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has already told its workers to report back to their deputed locations by November 15. However, the company in the past said it will implement a 25/25 model in the future. Under 25/25, only 25% of its over half-a-million workforce will be in the office at any given point in time by 2025 with associates spending only 25% of their time at the office. Within project teams, only 25% of employees can be co-located.
TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan first highlighted its 25×25 or 25/25 plan during the company’s FY20 annual report. He has spoken about it since on multiple occasions. “Our customers are comfortable with this model and want us to take more work that others are not able to handle. This has given us the confidence to come out with a bold new Vision 25/25,” said TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan when presenting the company’s FY2020 annual report. It is to be noted that TCS was an early adopter of the work-from-home model when the Covid-19 pandemic hit India in 2020. Since April 2020, its 488,649 employees globally were among the first to start remote work.
Only 5% of employees of TCS are working from offices currently. Towards the end of the calendar year 2021, the company will ask all its employees initially before implementing the 25/25 model in a phased and flexible manner.
The Nasscom-Indeed study also found that 72% of organisations look forward to operate at 50% employee capacity starting next year.
Infosys, China has 91% employees working from office, said Infy Chief Operating Officer UB Pravin Rao during the company’s second-quarter results in October. However, in India, US and the UK, 98.5% are still working from home while in Southeast Asia, some 80% are. Rao also said the company has been asking all its senior leaders in India to come to office at least once a week. The company is also asking senior leaders to have several interventions for employees at least once a month so that it can have a larger population working from home.
The Nasscom-Indeed Survey found that the middle management, those aged between 25 and 40 are most willing to work from office.
At Wipro over 85% of its global employees are now vaccinated with the first dose and 50% are fully vaccinated. Wipro CEO & MD Thierry Delaporte while speaking at the company’s second-quarter earnings results said the company’s fully-vaccinated employees can now work from office in India.
At Noida-based HCL Technologies, as many as 90% of the company’s employees and their families are fully or partially vaccinated and the company is looking at phased return. It is also encouraging employees to work from office.
