As the government issued guidelines for companies to resume operations after April 20, employees in the IT sector seem to be returning to work. Recently, Rashid Premji, the Chairman of Wipro through a tweet announced that his company has resumed operations at its Kochi campus with 120 employees joining the office.
However, he also highlighted that the employees will return to the office in a staggered manner as advised by the government and new social guidelines have been put in place to support employee safety.
“Working in our new normal with social distancing guidelines putting employee safety first. Thank you to the team at Wipro for doing a great job in readying us for this new start,” Premji said.
The recent development at Wipro comes after the Union Minister for IT and Telecommunication, Ravi Shankar Prasad announced that employees in the Information Technology (IT) sector can work from home till July 31. He communicated the decision after discussing with IT ministers from all states. The central government has extended the relaxations for VPN norm further till the end of July.
Currently, 93% of Wipro’s billable employees have client approvals to deliver services from home.
According to various reports, currently, about 90% of IT employees and 70-80% of BPOs and small and medium businesses in the sector are estimated to be working from home to ensure business continuity, according to reports.
Industry body Nasscom had earlier advised members to start with 15-20% of their workforce returning to offices in the first phase, though home ministry guidelines allow IT and ITeS firms to operate with 50% strength, effective 20 April.
However, given the spread of the covid-19 pandemic, Nasscom later revised its stance and said they are advising companies to operate with only about 10% workforce in phase 1.
Another Indian IT major TCS has recently also said that it desires to have 75% of its workforce continue working from home even after the pandemic gets over.
As part of its earnings announcement for FY20, TCS said that it believes its offices need not have more than 25% of its workforce in order to achieve 100% productivity and that it envisions this as a reality by 2025.
HrNxt.com Newsdesk has researchers and writers with an excellent domain knowledge about the talent ecosystem, and the business environment. The team keeps a tab on the latest happenings in the ecosystem to bring most relevant news and insights for our readers. You can connect with our newsdesk at newsdesk@hrnxt.com.