Tech Mahindra will eventually have close to 25-30 percent of its employees work from home (WFH) permanently, said Manoj Bhat, CFO, Tech Mahindra.
Speaking to the media after the first quarter results, Bhat said, “Now more than 90 percent of people are working from home. Customers are appreciating that we have been able to meet expectations in terms of service delivery. To me, overall long term, 25-30 percent will be permanent WFH.”
“Given the current uncertainty, working from offices will be a very small number, potentially at least for one or two quarters,” he added.
In an earlier statement, the company said less than one percent of the employees are currently working out of office. Earlier, some of its service lines like business process services faced some challenges when employees worked from home.
Bhat explained that the company has made investments in the integrated command and control centre that allows it to drive outcomes and put in risk mitigation plans, be it working from home or office.
More companies are moving to blended model when it comes to WFH. While TCS has said that it will have only 25 percent of employees working from office 25 percent of the time, others have taken a more cautious stand.
Most of them have said that it will be a hybrid model where some sections of employees will WFH and others from office. For instance, HCL Tech has taken a stand that WFH will not be a permanent feature for the company. In a recent interaction, VV Apparao, chief human resources officer, said working from home continuously is not healthy, neither physically nor mentally.
“In the office, they will meet people, get some fresh air. When they work from home continuously, we believe that it is not healthy in the longer run. So we are not mandating anywhere,” he added.
Moreover, Apparao explained that while the industry has permissions from the government and clients during the pandemic, they are temporary in nature. “So now if you want to make it a permanent way of working then all the policy framework, guidelines for STPI, all need permanent changes, including the security aspect,” he added.