After spending the past two years pushing employees back to office campuses, India Inc may once again be warming up to work-from-home arrangements. The decision this time is not driven by cost control but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for austerity.
Aligning with the PM’s call, RPG Group Chairman Harsh Goenka on Thursday asked group companies to reduce discretionary spending, minimise travel, encourage remote working and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.
What did Harsh Goenka suggest to employees?
Sharing the internal communication to senior leaders in a post on X, Goenka said that the RPG have responded to the PM’s call with austerity and responsible resource allocations. “I hope other corporates will follow suit,” he wrote.
The internal note read: “As you are aware, the Hon. Prime Minister has called for a renewed national focus on austerity and responsible resource utilisation. As a Group, it is important that we demonstrate leadership by embracing these measures wholeheartedly and setting the right example for our teams”.
According to the note, employees who can work remotely should be “actively encouraged” to do so. The group also directed businesses to sharply reduce travel expenses.
“Foreign Travel: To be curtailed to the absolute minimum,” the note said, while domestic air travel “should be significantly reduced”. Teams were also advised to “avoid or minimise any meetings that require intercity travel”.
The group further asked companies to accelerate adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles for all future company-owned or site-leased cars.
The communication also encouraged virtual meetings, carpooling and use of public transport as part of broader sustainability and cost-saving measures.
“These steps are essential not only to support the national agenda but also to strengthen our internal culture of responsibility, agility, and cost-consciousness,” Goenka said.
‘WFH may be less effective’, said a 2024 survey
The development marks a notable shift at a time when many companies across sectors had tightened return-to-office policies, arguing that physical workplaces were necessary to improve productivity and collaboration after the pandemic. A November 2024 report titled “Work-from-Home: Benefits and Costs”, jointly published by the CII and the Faculty of Management Studies, found that remote working “may be less effective for fostering communication and teamwork compared to traditional office-based work practices”.
It warned that remote working poses challenges to “developing and sustaining an organisation’s culture” over the long term.
The push for remote work is also receiving support from employee bodies in the technology sector. The Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has formally written to the Ministry of Labour and Employment seeking an advisory encouraging work-from-home arrangements across India’s IT and IT-enabled services sector wherever operationally feasible.
In its representation to Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, NITES argued that work-from-home should be treated as a national economic measure linked to fuel conservation and reduced infrastructure strain rather than merely an employee benefit.
The employee body said the IT and ITES sector is well positioned to support the government’s conservation efforts, noting that the industry had already demonstrated during the pandemic that large-scale remote work could continue effectively without major disruption.