Indian firms want staff back in office despite PM Modi’s support for WFH

Employers believe that face-to-face interactions are key to forging bonds between colleagues in the workplace.
By: | September 5, 2022
Topics: DE&I | Employee Experience | Hybrid Working | India | Mobility | News

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s support for work-from-home (WFH) arrangements as a means of increasing female labour-force participation, most businesses have resorted to calling employees back to the office.

According to data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, women’s participation in the labour force from January-March 2022 was 20.4%. Against this backdrop, IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has expressed the need for workers to return to the office.

“We hired about 100,000 people last year. About 25,000 of them joined TCS remotely without even taking the ID cards or seeing a TCS office and have chosen to leave this year for another job,” said N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS, according to Business Today.

He believed that employees would have valued TCS much more than working remotely because of the face-to-face interactions.

READ: India pushes for more flexible work and empowerment for women

“While employees are given the freedom to work from the office or their home, many employers are encouraging their team members to work from the office at a designated frequency to build relations and create bonds with their colleagues,” said Anshuman Das, CEO of talent solutions provider Careernet.