IT major Wipro resumed operations at its Kochi office on Tuesday with 120 people returning to work. Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji tweeted the same, highlighting social distancing guidelines undertaken by the company at the office.
“Working in our new normal with social distancing guidelines putting employee safety first. Thank you to the team Wipro for doing a great job in readying us for this new start," he said in the tweet.
We started operations in Kochi today with 120 people returning to the office. Working in our new normal with social distancing guidelines putting employee safety first. Thank you to the team @Wipro for doing a great job in readying us for this new start. pic.twitter.com/DQR6PgVJJq
— Rishad Premji (@RishadPremji) April 27, 2020
This comes even as Union Minister for IT and Telecommunication, Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday announced that employees in the Information Technology (IT) sector can work from home till July 31. He communicated the decision after discussing with IT ministers from all states.
Wipro CEO Abidali Neemuchwala too had echoed a similar opinion. During Wipro’s investor conference call announcing its Q4 results, he had said that 93% of the company’s employees were approved to work from home and “90% of our employees are actually engaged in delivering projects globally and services to our customers in a work from home mode.”
Terming this the ‘new normal’, Neemuchwala said that it would create new opportunities for them to do more work globally.
Bhanumurthy BM, the company’s President and COO said that there could be larger opportunities in enabling work from home “depending upon the size of the organisation and how ready they are right now.”
Meanwhile, another IT behemoth Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), as part of its earnings announcement for FY20, recently came out with a revelation that it believes its offices need not have more than 25% of its workforce in order to achieve 100% productivity and that it envisions this as a reality by 2025.
Calling this the 25/25 model, TCS Chief Operating Officer (COO), NG Subramaniam said that they do not need more than 25% of employees at their facilities to be fully productive.
In what may be a sign of things to come, former NASSCOM chairman and WNS Group CEO Keshav Murugesh believes this paves the way for a parallel gig economy in India, "where technology enables efficient, remote consultants as an imperative part of the employee force."