WHY CHENNAI TECH FIRM EMPLOYEES DEMAND TO GET BACK TO OFFICE? WHAT COMPANIES SAY? - REPORT

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, work from home (WFH) has become the new normal for most IT sectors in the country. It took almost a month for people to get accustomed with the work from home environment which many are still not comfortable with. 

Ever since the lockdown has taken place, several tech firms have rolled out WFH models for employees but after a few months firms stated that many employees wanted to return to the regular work environment.

Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO, Zoho, said: “We ran a survey and found out that 10 percent of our employees want to get back to the office. The lack of human interaction is a problem — there’s something about face-to-face interaction that can’t be replaced.”

Also according to Vembu’s observations, 82 percent of Indian employees want to get back to the workplace to seek out the social interaction at the office that has thus far been absent while working from home.  

Another renowned firm - Freshworks’ Chennai office also states the same. “There are groups of employees who enjoy working from the office, want to work from office and have to work from the office,” said the company’s chief human resources officer, Suman Gopalan.

According to a CNBCTV18 report, a week back, FMCG major CavinKare decided to shut down its headquarters in Chennai, which made 300 employees to work from home, “permanently”. "We have seen productivity go up and travel time saved. In all, this totals to an employee putting in an extra 55 days per-year,” said the company’s chairman and managing director, CK Ranganathan.

Due to work from home, FMCG also recorded shorter product launch timelines and more efficient meetings when done virtually. Few months back, IT services and consulting major, TCS, said that 75 percent of its workforce would work from home by 2025.