Hybrid working in India: the new normal

With the World Health Organization (WHO) warning that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, businesses in countries like India understandably remain cautious about fully opening their offices and asking all their employees to come into the workplace.

“This pandemic is changing but it’s not over,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO recently. “Our ability to track the Covid-19 virus is under threat as reporting and genomic sequences are declining, meaning it is becoming harder to track Omicron and analyse future emerging variants.”

Information technology companies – such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and HCL Tech – have already announced their long-term plans on how and when employees will work from home. The IT majors say they will follow the hybrid model of work in the long term – a combination of working remotely (including at home or in locations like local co-working spaces and cafes), and from an office.

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Supporting worker wellbeing
TCS recently sent a letter to all staff explaining how it will be using a ‘3Es’ (Enable-Embrace-Empower) model to help employees (and the entire business) to seamlessly master the art of working from any location.

Among other things, this includes measures aimed at ensuring staff are able to ‘embrace’ the new hybrid working lifestyle (including steps to support workers’ physical and mental wellbeing, like the good ergonomic set-up of home workstations and ensuring people maintain a good work-life balance); ‘enabling’ work from anywhere (such as digitising processes like employees’ leave approval forms); and ‘empowering’ employees with solutions that enable them to work from any location (such as ensuring everyone has access to online video conferencing software).

For example, in an article on the 3Es approach published on its website, TCS says remote work can benefit employees’ mental health and work-life balance – but warns that “with no clear separation or boundary between work and home, it is highly possible to get onto an ‘always online’ mode”.

It adds it is therefore essential employees are trained to “disconnect and decouple from the work zone to live life in a harmonious way without compromising the social element or health factor. Finding work-life harmony not only reduces stress, but it also prevents burnout and social isolation. It is about incorporating work in life that promotes happiness both at home and work.”

TCS also plans to set up occasional operating zones and hot desks at various office locations worldwide, including in India. These will allow its workers (known as ‘associates’) to work and engage with fellow team members from any TCS office or location.

The company is also adopting what it calls the ‘25/25’ policy. Under this, by 2025, no more than 25 per cent of the company’s associates will be expected to work from the office at any given point in time, and associates will not be required to spend more than 25 per cent of their time in the office.

TCS’s chief operating officer, N Ganapathy Subramaniam, said remote working has worked well for customers as well as employees, and all service levels have been met. “We observe better through-put and productivity,” he explained.

TCS allowed staff to begin working from home in large numbers after consulting more than 1,000 of its clients about its plans and arrangements to ensure the security of online information during remote working. “Once we explained the Secure Borderless WorkSpace options to our clients, the approvals came and we quickly enabled remote working,” Subramaniam said.

Meanwhile, Infosys, a major provider of digital outsourcing and IT services to Indian businesses, has a three-phased plan on working from home. In the first phase, the IT giant is encouraging employees who either live in the same towns and cities where the company’s development centres (DCs, or offices) are located, or in towns close to the DCs, to come to the office twice a week.

In the second phase, the company’s chief financial officer Nilanjan Roy says Infosys will encourage people who live outside the DC towns to start making preparations over the next few months to see if they can come back to their base DCs.

“In the long term, we are looking at the hybrid model of work, depending upon the clients, regulatory environment and a number of other considerations,” added Roy.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for another major IT company, HCL Technologies, said one of the firm’s top priorities is ensuring the safety and wellbeing of its employees and their families, both in light of the ongoing risk from Covid-19 and more generally during home and hybrid working.

“We also remain deeply committed to maintaining our business normalcy, thereby ensuring uninterrupted services to our clients. At present, we are monitoring the situation and continue to operate in a hybrid model,” said the spokesperson.

Monitoring risks from Covid-19
Meanwhile, some companies have also started monitoring employees’ health status in relation to Covid-19 infection, sickness and medical treatment.

RPG Group, a tyre and infrastructure conglomerate with 30,000 employees, said it has alerted its insurance team to extend support to employees in case of hospitalisation due to complications from Covid-19. The company is also monitoring the general health status of employees with Covid-19 on digital tracking dashboards, tracking and assessing issues like the number of infections and sickness days and rates.

“While continuing with the hybrid model of work, our group insurance team is on high alert to extend immediate support in case any employee needs hospitalisation,” said S. Venkatesh, group president of human resources at RPG Enterprises.

“A digital tracking dashboard continuously updates the leadership of the group of companies of positive and recovered cases,” he added.

Many Indian employers and employees say they are highly unlikely to return to full-time office working as the home and hybrid model is becoming the new approach to modern working.

Many employers and employees say home and hybrid working provides both business and wellbeing benefits – such as lower operating costs from a reduction in office space; improved work/life balance for staff due to removal of commuting time; and had made it easier for employees to juggle responsibilities like childcare and other care duties.

“We are never going completely back to [office-based] work anymore and will follow the hybrid approach in our corporate offices,” said Praveen Purohit, deputy chief human resources officer at Vedanta Group, the oil, gas and metals company. In fact, Vedanta Group primarily relies on video-conferencing for all its business meetings.

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Hydrid working expected to ‘ramp up’
IT company Tech Mahindra says its employees will continue to have the flexibility to work from anywhere and expects this trend of hybrid working to ramp up. “Having said that, we see that many associates at Tech Mahindra are recharting their routes back-to-office and are looking forward to meeting their teams in person,” said Harshvendra Soin, global chief people officer & head – marketing, at Tech Mahindra.

Meanwhile, Adarsh Mishra, chief human resources officer at the consumer electronics company Panasonic India, said the business is encouraging hybrid meetings as this helps employees to easily and effectively manage and arrange their daily schedules. “We have also installed Coronaguard filters (a kind of air purifying filter) as an added safety measure in our office premises,” Mishra added. The company is also arranging Covid-19 vaccination booster doses for all its workers.

The consultancy and audit giant Deloitte has adopted a hybrid model for its Indian division that means the company’s executives are only required to attend the office on the days prescribed by their team’s requirements, and book their ‘hot desks’ using an internal app.
Deloitte is also stepping up efforts to ensure all staff are vaccinated against Covid-19.

“They [employees] were already required to be double-vaccinated (this is synced to access cards) and we’re now providing reimbursements for the third dose as well,” said S.V. Nathan, partner and chief talent officer, Deloitte India.

Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has announced that his digital payments platform will allow employees in tech, business and product roles to work from home or any location of their choice.

It’s not just corporations that will benefit from new ways of working, like home, hybrid and remote working in locations like local co-working spaces and even coffee shops. Employees will save time and money previously swallowed up by commuting and generally enjoy a better work-life balance. 

For instance, an IT professional recently admitted she prefers working from home as it saves her both time and money while increasing her productivity.

For employers, there’s another benefit too. Their recruitment is no longer constrained by geography.

Hybrid working model becoming the norm
Meanwhile, a new survey revealed that 73 per cent of office space occupiers want to follow a hybrid working model for their employees in the future. According to the survey conducted by real estate firm CBRE South Asia Pvt Ltd, over 73 per cent of office space occupiers in India are planning hybrid working arrangements instead of allowing employees to always work from home.

According to the study, the growing trend in hybrid working is because businesses are increasingly choosing flexible working schedules for their staff as the pandemic has eased.

The majority of office tenants questioned also highlighted employee health and wellbeing as the most crucial factor they wish to address as staff return to offices, even on a hybrid basis.

The CBRE report, 2022 India Office Occupier Survey, states: “The flexible working approach is a mix of four patterns that includes just-in-case remote work for specific circumstances, three-plus office days a week, an equal mix of office and remote work, and remote work for three-plus days a week.”

The survey further highlighted that the technology and banking, financial services and insurance corporates who plan to implement hybrid working policies would mainly prefer an ‘equal mix of office-based and remote work’ or ‘mostly in office’.