The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the workspace landscape in India. From a nine-to-five lifestyle to flexible schedules and the work-from-home options.
While working from home as a concept did exist before, it had not become a necessity until this year. With employees confined to the four walls of their homes, offices had to be accommodating and look beyond the traditional workspace. This was particularly true for IT companies and businesses operating out of the cloud. Boardroom meetings moved to Zoom, work teams moved to WhatsApp and documents moved from organizers to Google Drive.
Companies were discovering that the workforce was equally efficient as lines between the home and the office blurred. While there were apprehensions that the work-from-home solution would further unsettle the delicate work-life balance of the majority of the population, things turned out to be quite different as people learnt to restructure their home life around their new work-from-home arrangements.
Even the government has realised the necessity of the work-from-home model
and has introduced guidelines that facilitate the adoption of permanent work from home and work-from-anywhere models by companies, especially those in the IT and allied technology sectors.
Under the new work guidelines introduced by the government, KPOs, BPOs and companies in the ITES sector can function without mandatory reporting obligations.
Along with this, the new guidelines form a flexible framework for the technology sector workforce to function in.
The Tata Group and its subsidiaries, such as TATA Steel and TATA Consultancy Services (TCS), have adopted a new Agile Work Model, in which white-collar employees of the group will be able to work from anywhere. This decision by the company came as India braced for the new reality of COVID-19, which is likely to stay in the country for at least the next three years.
While TCS was already functioning in a 25/25 model with its Secure Borderless Work Spaces, by moving 75% of its workforce to permanent work-from-home mode in April 2020, the new government guidelines meant that the Tata Group could take a call on shifting other employees to the same model. The group has been working on these agile working models since early 2020 and plans to follow it until 2025 for TCS.
As for TATA Steel, the group plans to shift 10% of its white-collar workforce to Work from Anywhere mode and further shift 30% employees to the new agile mode in subsequent phases. The transition has begun from this month and it is going to be easy for the white-collared employees as they have been working from home since the onset of the lockdown and are already used to working with flexible frameworks.
The TATA group is hopeful that the Agile Working Model will help the company accommodate employees from across the country who will no longer need to conform to the traditional workplace cultures.
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