Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

On Wednesday, Home affairs Ministry outlined several guidelines to reopen certain industries throughout the nation. IT and IT-enabled services firms is one of them. The companies are now allowed to function at 50% strength, starting April 20th. However, it seems that Most IT Companies aren’t eager to do so, at the moment. Our Government hasn’t traced out long-term solutions to fight coronavirus outbreaks and these firms’ decisions seem to be mindful of that.

Most companies are directing their employees to work from home, for now. Offices, however, are being equipped for the eventuality of letting their employees come back to work. Tried and tested measures like frequent sanitizing plans, strict social distancing plans and regular temperature checking are expected to be put into practice for office-bound employees.

The $191 billion Indian IT industry employs over 4.3 million people, and has largely managed to serve clients during the pandemic as nearly 90% of the workforce continue working from home. Therefore, Most IT firms don’t want to take the risk of bringing their employees back to offices in sizable numbers, because coronavirus outbreaks still pose a major threat.

The MHA circular which allows IT/ITeS services to resume operation at half capacity, stated, “These limited exemptions will be operationalised by states/Union Territories/district administrations based on strict compliance to existing guidelines. Also, before allowing these select additional activities, states/UTs/district administrations shall ensure that all preparatory arrangements with regard to the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for social distancing in offices, workplaces, factories and establishments, as also other sectoral requirements are in place.

National Association of Software and Services Companies(NASSCOM) responded to the MHA circular, stating, “Good to see the MHA directive stating that 50% of IT sector can go back to working form offices. Our back-to-work guidance to the industry would be a phased approach (15-20 per cent workforce in Phase 1) with stringent safety measures in place.”

Post the enforcement of lock-down, most IT and business process management companies have started thinking of the world thereafter, and a majority of IT Heads agree that things will not go back to being the way they used to be, before the pandemic struck.

HCL Technologies has announced that it will continue to let employees work remotely as they decide on whether to let employees back into offices, within the next 8-10 days. However, leading IT Firm, Infosys, is already planning to let employees work from campuses, in phases.

Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Wipro and several other IT companies shipped desktop computers to employees who were not provided with laptops, to enable them work from them during lock-down. They don’t want the hassle of bringing all those computers back to the campus as they focus on business continuity planning. Moreover, these companies are enforcing time-tested measures like managing common areas to avoid crowding, increasing the gap between cubicles and completely wiping out bio-metric fingerprint-based attendance systems.

In a Wednesday tweet, NASSCOM president Debjani Ghosh said that until a vaccine to treat Covid-19 is invented and made readily available, businesses would have to learn to coexist with the virus, and, hence, opening up the industry in a staggered way is the best thing to do.

Bhupender Singh, President of Group Transformation at BPM firm Teleperformance opined, “This pandemic represents a catalyst for digital transformation. In a post Covid-19 landscape, working from home agents will be a regular delivery option — indeed, it is possible that 10-40 per cent of all work will be done through remote working. The automation of processes, and the digitalisation of customer experience, will continue to accelerate.”

Rajiv Ahuja, the president at Startek stated, “Most measures that have been put in place during the pandemic are also likely to continue. “Unlike conventional warfare, the enemy here is unseen, and so we will have to continue to drive stringent preventive measures such as social distancing, work from home, harnessing the power of digital/AI and effectively integrating multiple customer experience channels to ensure business continuity.”

Market analysts are predicting major shifts in the IT industry after this global pandemic. A recent research by Avasant has stated that these might include savings in travel expenses and possible improvement in productivity, remote delivery, increased offshore work, restructuring of contracts, and new compensation structures with IT clients.

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