Coronavirus pandemic | Here's how techies are dealing with 'work from home' concept

N Raju*, a techie with a small IT firm in Bengaluru, has for years started his day at 8 in the morning with a team conference in office. For the past few days, there has been a slight change.

Raju and his colleagues are working from home after their company shut offices in light of the coronavirus outbreak.

The meetings generally last for an hour, and Raju assigns tasks and sets goals for the day. Once it is over, Raju makes more calls, this time with clients and other colleagues.

He tries to keep it as 'normal' as possible, but is still coming to terms with this new arrangement.

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"Well, the day never seem to end when you are working from home," he quipped, munching a hot samosa he ordered online. Time is already 11 am. He has started looking for lunch options, divided between a biriyani and simple sandwich.

It is estimated that close to 20 lakh IT employees could be working from home in the coming weeks. The sector employs about 50 lakh people.

This would the first instance when thousands of employees will be working from home, and a portion of them having never done this before. In that case, establishing a work routine and ensuring that things run smoothly is going to be biggest challenge.

Sharing his experience, Raju said: "We (his team) have established a routine more or less though we could still do better. But it was the hardest in the first few days."

Raju has been working from home for close to 10 days now.

“It is my first time WFH and had difficulty focusing. It is easy to get distracted. That is when I realised that it is not enough to have a laptop and connectivity. But also proper work environment,” he pointed out.

So he set up a new desk and established a routine for him and his team, including the informal conference calls. Then comes the next challenge, connectivity.

As more techies WFH, network connectivity is one of the major challenges firms would face. While Raju has been fortunate, many of his techie friends have issue connecting to VPN, virtual private network, needed to connect to the client network for security reasons. In areas such as Whitefield in Bengaluru that has high IT professional density, the network has slowed down. Some of the projects tools that techies use in office might not function as efficiently as in office will impact productivity and delay the project deliverables.

“You would have never worried about your network connectivity before. Now it becomes critical to ensure that deliverables are on time,” Raju adds. So people end up working more or pass on pending work onsite, to the client’s location.

“This is a concern. But clients do understand the issues and delays. However as the situation continues, it is unclear the consequence of all this,” Raju muttered. “No one has spoken out aloud. But uncertainty and fear of what is to come hangs in the air,” he said, gravely.

The IT sector has largely been insulated compared to others such as travel, hospitality and banking. However each of these sectors are directly impacted by the coronavirus outbreak with some clients losing millions. A recent report by Kotak institutional securities have pegged the growth to be 3-8 percent for IT firms.

Few HR experts pointed out that companies will not be giving huge hikes and bonuses like earlier. Layoffs could be in the pipeline and hiring postponed. “It would not be a surprise if there are pay cuts. Some businesses have done it,” said one. “For, holding a job is now more important than getting a hike,” the expert added.

Last year has seen major layoffs in the IT sector, mostly in the mid and senior management. Cognizant said it would lay off 12,000 senior employees in October 2019. In other IT firms such as Infosys, involuntary attrition had seen an increase in the previous quarter.

The pandemic has only made their fear palpable with layoffs. Working from home and totally cut off from colleagues has done nothing to allay the fears. It is even worse for people who are staying alone and nowhere to vent their frustration.

Raju’s wife had left Bengaluru two weeks ago to visit her family in the North and was due for return this week. However given the circumstances, she chose to stay back. Neither of them know when she will return. Raju has not been able to work out as well since gyms and swimming pools in his area are shut for a week.

“How long will you video call with friends and family, play video games and Netflix? But if it continues for a week more, I will either have a mental breakdown or I will become an expert in guitar or foreign language," Raju said jocularly.

Raju is now planning to take up guitar or take up a foreign language as a hobby. Good luck to him!

(*name changed to protect identity)