Indian IT companies nudge employees to return to offices

When TCS, India's largest IT company sent a missive to employees a month ago to return to work three times a week, it stirred a hornet's nest.

The move, a mandate to employees with consequences if they do not follow the roster, did not go down well. For some employees, this means travelling over 100km to their offices, as they had moved during the lockdown and now have children going to school. For others, it’s a question of flexibility after two years, and are questioning if the company’s 25x25 model will really be implemented.

The model is that only 25 percent of TCS employees will be in an office at any given point by 2025, and employees will not need to spend more than 25 percent of their time in office.

While TCS is the only IT major to have mandated it so far, others have used words such as “encourage”, asking people to return to work a few times each week.

It has been quite the year for the companies, as they battle moonlighting by employees, elevated attrition rates, and a significant portion of their workforce never having set foot in an office. For employees, a return to work mandate is forcing some of them to look for a change.

What the companies say

TCS: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the only one so far among the IT giants to set a clear mandate to return to offices. TCS has told employees to return to work three times a week, with managers creating a roster. Adherence to this roster is mandatory and will be tracked, according to an email sent to employees. “...any noncompliance will be taken seriously, and administrative measures may be applied.”

While announcing the company's results for the second quarter of FY23, Chief Human Resources Officer Milind Lakkad said that all of the company's seniors are coming to the office.

“The remaining staff, we are rostering all of them…today the situation is one-third of our workforce is coming to the office at least two times a week. This number will continue to increase,” he said.

Wipro: Wipro, too, said in an email to employees that offices would be open four times a week, with employees encouraged to return three times a week. It, however, did not mandate this.

This began on October 10, and Wipro CHRO Saurabh Govil said that the intent clearly is to reconnect people and to return to offices.

“All our offices, especially in India, are open four days a week and we expect leadership to be here three days a week. We're also giving them flexibility, but we also want connectedness. It's truly a hybrid model in terms of how we want to take it forward. Let's see how it evolves over a period of time,” Govil said.

Wipro’s Chairperson Rishad Premji has been a big supporter of bringing people back to offices. At a NASSCOM event last week, Premji said that 1 lakh people have joined the company in the last thirty months, but the company had less than 10 percent of people coming in. He said 30 percent of the company's employees live in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

“It’s a huge challenge. How do you build a sense of belonging to an organisation? Many of these people simply get a paycheck from the company and are engaged with a few of their leaders, typically on a collaborative medium. Connectedness is lost at some level,” he said, adding that he’s a “big believer” that all people should return to the office for some of the time.

Infosys: Returning to office is not yet a mandate at Infosys, and the company’s leadership said they support a flexible approach.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Salil Parekh said at a press conference following the release of the company's Q2 results that 45,000 employees were present in the office at any given time in early October. Compared to where the industry was a few months ago, he stated that this was a massive figure. This, he noted, was a huge number compared to where the industry stood a few months ago.

“We have been extremely supportive of a flexible approach, it has been well received and it is working. We are seeing that this is now gradually increasing…My sense is that over time, we will make all the support necessary so more and more employees can come back.”

He also said that a growing number of employees are returning to the office on their own, with the number increasing by the week.

“We want to make sure that we build things in the future which keep this element of flexibility and make sure that we address client-specific needs, but we want to make sure that it is something that our employees are comfortable with,” Parekh said.

This is especially significant given that Infosys was the first of the IT majors to unveil a policy allowing employees to take on side gigs with prior managerial approval amid moonlighting concerns.

HCLTech: Chief People Officer Ramachandran Sundararajan said that the company is adopting a hybrid operating model. He stressed that people have been encouraged to come to office three times a week, but there is no mandate.

“The way we have tried to manage it is to empower our project managers who are better equipped to decide what makes sense for their projects, their deliverables and their client commitments. It's managed in a decentralised way from that point of view,” he said, adding that the company’s footfall in offices has increased.

Working from the office three times a week is expected at the leadership level, he added.

CEO C Vijayakumar stressed that the operating model has changed forever, and people are not going to always come to the office and work.

How is this move likely to fare?

Even though India Inc. allows for flexibility and encourages employees to return to work on occasion, it may take time for the change to be accepted.

A survey by CIEL HR Services of employees from 19 tech giants found that 46 percent of respondents want to quit their jobs because they now lack the ability to work from office. It also particularly puts working mothers in a tight spot, as they figure out how to manage their children while continuing to work.

In addition, among mid-to-senior level employees, the survey said that 8 percent of employees plan to quit “as they see their employer’s demand of return to work is restrictive, curtails their independence and affects their lifestyle they have found endearing.”

Similarly, according to a poll conducted by HR Solutions company Aon, 68 percent of employers returned to the office following a hybrid model in August, up from 46 percent in January of this year. It also revealed that Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS) was one of the leading industries adopting hybrid, accounting for 79 percent.

Only 16 percent of hi-tech or IT companies were operating virtually, it said.
Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index Pulse Report signalled that there may also be a difference in perception between employees and leaders. Ninety-three percent of employees in India had said they are productive at work, but 91 percent of leaders said the shift to hybrid work made it challenging to have confidence in employees being productive.

In addition, a whopping 80 percent of employees in India said they need a better reason to come to work than company expectations. Motivators that could incentivise them to return to work include socialising with coworkers and reestablishing team relationships.