Work from Home: A riding on shift

Kaustuv Das

(The writer can be reached at kdas5349@gmail.com)

The Work From Home (WFH) or Remote Working is not a new term for people engaged in the Information Technology (IT) sector. Before the country went to the first-ever lockdown in March 2020, the WFH was mostly done by homemakers, single mothers, college-goers, etc., through various part-time jobs who were generally not in a position to spare a whole day outside the home due to their many unavoidable commitments. But, this pandemic has forced employers to send their employees home to work virtually. Even though we can always find many WFH offers on online job sites like Naukri.com, TimesJobs, Linkedin, etc., yet this pandemic has changed the whole outlook of the WFH concept. The Indian Information Technology (IT) industry- which is accounted for 8% of India's GDP has highly implemented and accepted the WFH approach through its hybrid workforce model. Our country's IT industry has an employee base of 4.47 million and since March 2020 to date, almost 90 per cent of the IT industry is doing WFH.

Moreover, some reputed MNCs have decided to allow their employee to permanently work from home, which includes companies like Twitter, Facebook, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages etc. Such measures have been taken by these companies as a permanent solution to protect their employees from the deadly virus. Companies across the sector are now following a hybrid model of work by blending Work From Home (WFH) and Work from Office (WFO).

Meanwhile, by gauging the impacts of the second wave of Covid-19, many companies have also issued notice to their employees that till employees get vaccinated; the companies will continue to follow the WFH model.

However, WFH does not apply to every sector, such as services, mining and manufacturing sectors. Keeping the occupational safety of service sector employees in mind, the Union Labour & Employment Ministry has for the first time proposed to formalize the WFH option to the service sector. The ministry's draft model of standing orders for the service sectors said that WFH is "subject to conditions of appointment or agreement between employers and workers, the employer may allow a worker to work from home for such period or periods as may be determined by the employer". It may be mentioned here that, the mining and manufacturing sector is still out of the WFH realm.

As our country has been reeling under the furious second wave of Covid-19, and the Central government has already warned for the third wave of coronavirus, in that case, it is anticipated that WFH will continue to be forced on a regular interval. But, here we need to note that, the WFH model has some degrees of disadvantages. The first and foremost is 'internet woes' as well as the lack of technology infrastructures- when we use data for 5 to 6 hours by attending a Video-Conference, Zoom meeting, Webinar, as a result, it costs us limitless data and slowing down of the speed of the internet, that may hamper in the consistency of the work, secondly, there is a problem in the monitoring of work. Thirdly, there are always acute security problems in confidential data transfer. So, it is crucial to have a proper monitoring mechanism in place so that, the employee could not breach any organization's terms & conditions.

If we overlooked its disadvantages, it will be worthy to say that, the WFH has been redefining the Human Resources practices for quite some time. Moreover, it gives an enormous opportunity by breaking the location barrier as one can work from anywhere. Same time, it is crucial for employers to relook into the infrastructural needs as they will need to accept this paradigm shift of a hybrid way of working in the long run if it proves to be a long-term solution to stop the surge of Covid-19.