Unlike the information technology companies, where bringing employees back to office has become a highly emotive issue, the rest of the India Inc has had a relatively smooth transition.
Employees at the corporate offices of companies across sectors like telecom, automobile, FMCG, steel, cement and others are either coming to office on all designated days or two-three days every week as per the policy laid out by their respective firms. Employees FE spoke to said that there’s no major issue involved in the matter and they purely go by the options their companies provide.
For instance, at the corporate offices of Maruti, Hyundai Motor India, Mahindra & Mahindra and Hero MotoCorp, employees have been coming to office all five days of the week for long. “We have been coming to office all five days since last year October. Maruti had shifted to work-from-home during the third Covid wave early this year, but once it abated everyone was back to attending office regularly,” said an employee.
“Offices are functioning as normal and everyone comes on a regular basis with the exception of those who report sick,” said a Hyundai staffer.
However, there are companies which have a flexible approach, like RPG Enterprises. “Those who physically need to be present like shop floor workers or security/facilities folks need to come to work every day. For customer facing roles the critical need is to be in front of customers, rather than being in the office,” said S Venkatesh, group president (HR), RPG Enterprises.
Similarly, Reliance Industries and its group firms and Bharti Airtel, have also adopted a flexible model. At RIL, employees need to come twice a week, whereas at Bharti, it’s need-based. Employees said that they fully abide by the decisions taken by the management and the HR department. “Today, we are asked to come twice a week, but if tomorrow we are asked to come all five days, it’s not going to be an issue,” most of the employees in these firms said.
FMCG and retail companies are following different versions of hybrid working. While the country’s largest FMCG company Hindustan Unilever (HUL) is unlikely to make the work model entirely back to office, companies like Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) are understood to be working three days a week from office and rest from work-from-home.
Tata Steel had implemented the agile working model policy in December 2020, under which, the job positions were classified into two categories of absolute work from home and flexi work from home, wherein the officers who are required to be based out of a particular location can work from home for unlimited days in a year.
“With the improved situation on ground around pandemic, we have witnessed an increase in the number of employees coming to offices. However, the employees continue to have the flexibility based on the organisational need. Around 10-15% employees are working from home on any given day. More than 50% workforce in functions like IT and procurement is working in absolute WFH mode,” a company spokesperson said.
According to HR professionals, Indian companies are still trying to find an equilibrium between 100% work from office and flexibility. Nishith Mohanty, partner at Korn Ferry said, “There are some companies who have said that coming to office is mandatory…period. However, there are companies who believe in the hybrid model and those are the ones experimenting and finding that equilibrium right now, and there are myriad shades of that,” he said.
Mohanty said that going forward too, future of work in India will be “a lot closer to old model”, however, acceptability of remote working and work from anywhere will definitely increase.
(With inputs from Swaraj Baggonkar in Mumbai)