TCS To Allow Work From Home For 75% Employees Even After COVID-19 Lockdown Ends

An interesting insight is being experienced by the corporate world with the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Since the imposed lockdowns have rendered workforces unable to commute to workplaces, work-from-home is increasingly becoming a trend.

As companies work with this model, they're taking stock of functions and staff that really require an attendance in office and others who can work remotely.

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India¡¯s biggest IT firm also reflected on this. Post thorough analysis, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has decided that it will follow on the work-from-home trend even post lockdown era and by 2025, will only require 25% of employees to attend office.

The announcement was made by firm¡¯s CEO Rajesh Gopinathan during the fourth-quarter earnings call. He said "it's about time. Our current operating model is currently a 20-year-old legacy. In some ways, this crisis actually leapfrogs us into a new model.¡±

The decision came as the company realised that attendance of its employees at work places was not required at full capacity at any given day. "We don¡¯t believe that we need more than 25% of our workforce, at our facilities, in order to be 100% productive," Gopinathan said, according to a Business Insider report.

Rajesh Gopinathan - Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (Image: Reuters)

Long-thought out move

The move comes as a part of TCS¡¯ pursuit for a secure borderless workspaces (SBWS) model which is aimed at increasing the company's throughput by 25%, as per N Ganapathy Subramaniam - chief operating officer at TCS.

The model also reveals that the company did not come upon the concept of work-from-home for its employees recently. It was a work in progress for the last few years. Gopinathan confirms this, saying "For the last few years, we have actually been pushing the concept to its next evolutionary path by what we call the open agile workspace concept.¡±

What helped though, was the sudden jerk to bring the plan to action with the Coronavirus induced lockdowns. The model was spread to all of TCS¡¯s operations.

The reassurance

TCS soon found out that the model worked well for the company. As per a statement by the company, the "proven business continuity processes got enhanced and securely, from 100% work from approved facilities to 90% operating remotely and securely connecting to our clients and TCS systems and networks.," said the company in a statement.

A thing to note here is that the work-from-home culture does not just require ¡°moving the person out from the office and allowing a laptop or a desktop located in the house to connect,¡± as per Gopinathan. There are several necessities to the process, like establishing secure connections between the workforce and the clients as well as ensuring optimum service quality.

(Representative Image: Reuters)

TCS believes that it managed to stay ahead of the curve since it had been working on the model since long. And that is exactly what makes the company continue to work on this model.

"We're not going to go back to where we were. The reason we have been able to get on top of it is that we had invested in building those processes and systems,¡± Gopinathan said.

Good savings model

It is easy to see how such a model is a win-win for the firm as well as the employees. While TCS will stand to benefit from a reduction in the office space and other such expenses on each employee, employees will save money on the reduced commute cost to and from work. The overall savings might not be directly proportional to the number of employees working from home at any given time but it will be a substantial saving nonetheless, considering TCS' 4.48 lakh employees globally.