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Representative picture. | Photo credit: PTI

Key highlights

• Speaking to the Economic Times earlier this month, Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO of TCS said, “We expect that sometime towards the end of the calendar year or early next year, depending on what this third wave turns out, we will return to 70-80 percent [of the people] in the office”

• The Safe Workplace Method will reportedly take into account factors such as vaccination status, employee home addresses, environmental risk, and basic health parameters to ensure that the workplace remains safe and employees remain confident

• As the largest player in the industry, TCS decisions will undoubtedly find resonance across the industry

Nearly two years since the first COVID-19 case was discovered, countries continue to suffer from the inexorable spread of the virus. But amid all of the chaos the pandemic has created, a reinterpretation of work culture is taking place around the world.

Within a few weeks, companies had to unlearn decades-old work practices and switch their entire workforce to either absolute home office models or hybrid templates. While some companies found it easier than others, there is a growing feeling that change is likely to continue well into the post-pandemic.

At least in part, this is what the management of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT service provider, believes. The company has reiterated that it intends to get its massive workforce back into office by the end of the year or early 2022.

The IT giant currently expects to have between 70 and 80 percent of its employees back through the office doors as it pushes ahead with the implementation of its ambitious 25/25 model that by 2025 at least 25 percent of its workforce will work out of the office at some point Distance.

Speaking to the Economic Times earlier this month, Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO of TCS said, “We expect that sometime towards the end of the calendar year or early next year, depending on what this third wave turns out, we will return to 70-80 percent [of the people] in the office.”

So how is this planned? It calls the Safe Workplace Method through a system. The method “evaluates employee readiness, the workplace environment and the workforce model by evaluating various factors that ensure a stable workplace for employees,” says the IT major’s website. “It includes a number of apps and a dashboard that help collect feedback, automate the return to work processes, including contact tracking, shift management, and workplace planning. It also ensures that business will run smoothly during the transition. ”

The model will reportedly take into account factors such as vaccination status, employee home addresses, risk in the area, and basic health parameters to ensure that the workplace remains safe and employees are safe.

TCS takes the lead

Switching to a hybrid working model has been discussed many times by Indian companies, but currently does not have a strict definition. But with the 25/25 model, TCS seems to be taking the lead in defining it.

The company employs around a quarter of the 12 to 13 million organized private employees and operates branches at 250 locations in 50 countries. Overall, India’s IT sector accounts for around 40 percent of office rentals in the country, according to a report by India Ratings & Research.

As the largest player in the industry, TCS decisions will undoubtedly find resonance across the industry. In fact, it wasn’t long after TCS moved its staff home from the office that Infosys and Wipro became familiar with the idea. Nor is TCS the only one who recognizes that the home office model can persist and that a return to traditional work culture can even lead to backlash from employees.

Twitter and Square, for example, were among the first in the tech industry to declare that their employees could work remotely forever. Soon after their respective announcements, Facebook also extended its home office policy to July 2021. Later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went a step further, announcing that he expects at least half of all Facebook employees to work remotely by 2030 .

Additionally, and most importantly, as TCS has pointed out, the move to a hybrid model will also allow it to expand its network in terms of talent acquisition, as geographic boundaries may no longer be a hiring restriction. The ability to recruit the best and brightest across the country is not an asset that its competitors are likely to offer without resistance, one would think.

| The transformation of work culture is unlikely to happen overnight as new tools and innovations need to be developed to make up for the losses from the lack of face-to-face interaction. But it seems that there is no lack of will.