IT companies want their employees back

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: “My family members are happy as I’m in my hometown after years of being away from them,” Tejaswini, a techie working with a city-based IT firm said. “Switching back to the previous working system after two years won’t be an easy task,” she added.

When the Covid-induced lockdowns started in 2020, IT companies faced an unprecedented crisis and scrambled to rethink work boundaries almost overnight. As deaths mounted and infections spread rapidly in closed spaces, working from home (WFH) was an uneasy arrangement the management had to embrace despite initial tech constraints.

However, the firms tried to bring back employees to formal office set-ups every time infections dropped. But the emergence of a new Covid variant, Omicron, marred those plans.

Now, after around two years of working from the comfort of home, it might be the time for people to get back to their respective offices. Most giants in the city including Wipro, Cognizant, TCS and Infosys are asking their employees to be ready as they could be called to office as early as next month.

Bengaluru-based Wipro that had shut down its offices in January due to a surge in cases will now adopt a flexible and hybrid approach plans to return to office. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said it wants to see its campuses bustling with youthful energy in the coming months.

“There has been a sharp decline in Covid-19 cases across the state over the past few weeks,” Amazon reportedly told its workers in a recent memo. “This is a positive sign that we can return to the path to normal operations,” it added.

Recently, Google CEO Sundar Pichai interacted with employees around the globe, “We are welcoming back tens and thousands of Googlers on a voluntary basis,” he said. Similarly, Apple said that the decision would be based upon concerns over the sudden surge of the Delta variant.

The decision by the companies has met with mixed response from their employees. Some are raring to go back to office, while others prefer the comfort of home. Some people also said that returning to office, getting into a new routine again and managing both family time and office can turn stressful. This is particular in the case of women employees.

“At home, people have autonomy. They can set their own schedules. Some people like to wake up early and start working right away. Others are night owls. In an office, you don’t have a choice. You’re forced into the ‘10 to 6’ grind,” said Rajendran, Human Resource Manager at Bytech India.

The work from home culture has also helped employees save on travelling time and costs. Even the IT companies have made 20% to 25% savings on operational cost, including rentals, energy, catering, transportation, housekeeping, water and others, meaning a direct positive impact on their bottom lines and profit, according to the CFO of a tech firm.

“I’m excited to see people in person because I have missed them,” Libin Babu, an employee at Accenture, said. “But on the other hand, it’s also a little strange because I’m so used to not being around people that there’s a little bit of anxiety about it,” he added.

Considering these aspects, many employers are willing to be flexible, but there have been concerns over data privacy and moonlighting too. IT companies worry that this may cause revenue and productivity losses. This is also one of the factors leading to the pressure to get employees back in workplace at the earliest, at least for some days a week.