Is work from home here to stay?

The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns have made work from home an imperative for several industries. Clearly, some job profiles lend themselves to work from outside the office. Others, where human interaction is necessary, obviously do not.

For those industries and job profiles for which work from home is possible, has the concept come to stay, is the question before us now…

Running up to 2025, a large IT services firm in India has said it would have about 75% of its 4.5 lakh employees globally to work from home, up from the industry average of 20% today. It has gone out on a limb and said it did not believe it needed more than 25% of its workforce at its facilities in order to be 100% productive.

Will this trend catch on and become permanent? What does it mean for fissures that are already evident in today’s workplace? The digital divide? The gender divide? Transnational sensibilities? How do you build trust in a world where turning up for work is perceived as a mark of commitment?

Host: Bharat Kumar K, Senior Deputy Editor - Business of The Hindu

Guests:

Ashwini Deshpande, whose PhD and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India.

Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, who is the President of the 184-year old Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) and also the Chairman and Managing Director of Cognizant India, one of the largest employers in India, with over 200,000 full-time employees of which over 75,000 are women.

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