Companies Gearing Up For the New Normal of WFH

In view of the governments recent initiative to make Work From Home (WFH) and Work From Anywhere (WFA) permanent features for the IT/ITeS/BPO sectors, companies will have to gear up for this new normal to implement it as a long term strategy.

Building a homogeneous culture, training and skills for organisations, security, employee bonding among others need to be relooked in this new normal, with millions of employees working at the place of their choice.

The pandemic has been the biggest disruptor of this century and this move by the government can be a gamechanger for the IT and BPO industry, positioning India as a global outsourcing hub leading to job creation beyond the metros.

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The changes will enable companies to attract talent from anywhere, reduce costs of operations while also accelerate development and use of new human resources, marketing, sales, business development and other practices to ensure high productivity.

Karthikeyan Natarajan, President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Cyient, a leading home-grown engineering and digital solutions company with a global footprint, hailed the government's move, stating that the liberalised guidelines will help plan workforce and customer delivery as well as create jobs in Tier-2 and 3 cities, given that the pandemic might be a reality for the next two years."

Startups involved in training and skilling the workforce to enable them to efficiently conduct business online are optimistic about the future.

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Shammi Pant, Co-founder of mYJen, which provides AI based communications skills coaching tools, is looking forward to tapping the tremendous opportunity of reinventing and transforming the workplace.

According to her, effective employee communication skills will play a pivotal role in making this model successful. The Learning & Development (L&D) teams have a critical role to play in carving out the right learning solutions, by introducing new age and high tech digital and AI learning products that are scalable and personalised.

On the other side of the spectrum, companies too are actively attempting to address these issues based on the learning from more than six months of WFH now.

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According to Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, Barco India, "As we navigate through the human and economic impact of Covid-19, it will be imperative for employees to focus on agility, adaptability, reskilling, and upskilling to ensure that they are trained for the upcoming challenges and rapid technology changes.

"At Barco, we have initiated reskilling and upskilling initiatives along with providing access to virtual courses on edX platform and certified training programs through our Learning and Development centre of excellence – Barco University, to keep our employees up to date and relevant in today's competitive market."

The government policy announcement is also a reflection of the changing needs of businesses in a digital world. The regulations on working from home have constantly been eased since March when the country first went into lockdown.

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For example, in April the Department of Telecom (DoT) did away with the need to make security deposits or submit WFH agreement the companies had with their employees. And on November 5, the DoT completely changed the guidelines to allow permanent WFH or WFA in India for Other Service Providers (OSPs) employees of BPO and ITeS companies. (IANS)