Top companies says, Employees free to come back to the office or pick up the workfrom home
For a few months, many top companies allow their employees that they are free to come back to the office or pick up their work from home if they want to
Nestle, Coca-Cola, Godrej Consumer, Dabur, Amway, and Tata Consumer are among the top companies that have announced plans to allow their employees to return to the office or work from home for a few months. Regardless, three-fourths of their employees have been wholly vaccinated, according to the companies.
Several companies like Tata Steel, GE India, and PepsiCo said, for the most part, they are working from home while Maruti Suzuki, Mercedes-Benz India, and ITC are ensuring a scheduled system. Suresh Narayanan, chairman of packaged foods maker Nestle, said, "For the next few months, it’s the employees' call whether they want to continue their work from home or come back to the office".
Flexibility is provided for all roles, and the uncertainty about getting the employees back to the office is because of the chances of a third wave when the festive season starts next month, according to the executives of the group of companies. Also, Sunil Kataria, chief executive of Godrej Consumer Products, said, "regardless of whether employees have been vaccinated one or two doses still, we are giving them the flexibility to work from home".
Employees should be allowed to make their own decisions, according to the HR director of a larger group. Also, more than two-thirds of the employees got their second dose, and they are advised to work from the office only when it’s necessary, said the representative of Tata Steel. On the other hand, according to Neerja Bhardwaj, GE India Technology Centres HR business partner, "80% of the employees have taken their first dose and half of them are wholly vaccinated. They are working from home currently".
AnshuBudhraja, Amway chief executive, said, "however our offices are currently open but employees have the autonomy to work from home". This new concept of work from home came after the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. It completely changed the dynamics of work culture, and PepsiCo’s chief HR officer Pavitra Singh said "we have launched a new policy-work that works - with its core being flexibility". Google and TCS also reformed the work-from-home option. Recently, Google declared that its employees will work from home till January 2022 and have given a 30-day heads-up before they report to the office. TCS, on the other hand, stated that in the future, only one-fourth of its employees will be required to work in an office, and by 2025, only 25% will be required to work outside of offices.
Apart from them, Rajesh Uppal, Maruti Suzuki's chief information officer and representative of Dabur, also believed that working from home is not mandatory and employees need to work from an office. According to Nishi Kulshreshtha Chaturvedi, Coca-Cola’s vice president of HR, "distant working continues as the default mode of operations, and the beverage maker is operating at a maximum occupancy of a maximum of 20-25% at its headquarters currently".
This month, Mercedes-Benz has acquired a hybrid model of working, and there is a 50% attendance with employees attending the office every other day. Also, Mercedes-Benz India managing director and CEO Martin Schwenk said, "by the month-end we will complete the vaccination for all our employees and vaccination drive has met a good response from them and dealers". On the other hand, Amitav Mukherji, head of corporate human resources at ITC, said "relative to other employees who had taken their both doses attending the office at a high frequency".
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