IT work clusters getting ready to resume work from offices

With Covid infections ebbing, IT offices are gearing up to call their employees to work from office. While going full capacity is still difficult, many of them are willing to start up to 30 per cent capacity and are keen to adopt a hybrid model, that will allow some employees to work from home.

The Telangana Government, on the other hand, has been interacting with various companies, IT work ecosystem stakeholders and others to infuse confidence among them to start working from offices again.

With vaccination gaining steam, several employees have already got the two doses.  The companies, their suppliers and contractors too are egging on their employees to get vaccinated and be ready to resume duties from offices.

"Facility management services are the backbone for the IT offices to function. We are working to ensure that people come back to work from the offices. There coming back to office will positively impact multiple sectors- cabs, cafeterias, housekeeping, stationery, consumables and more," Satyanarayana Mathala, President, Telangana Facilities Management Council (TFMC), an industry body of facility management companies, told media.

The body has about 400 members. Facilities managers are responsible for building maintenance, health and safety standards, space management, communications infrastructure, testing and inspections, contract management, renovations and refurbishments.

"Companies that are into services did not have



much of a problem in terms of productivity with respect to work-from-home. However, the companies in the product development found the going difficult sometimes due to the security concerns," said Satyanarayana.

"Smaller companies with about 100 people will not have any problem to begin work from office. However, larger companies will have resort to a hybrid model, were a only a certain percentage of them will come to office on designate days," he said adding that many of the staff have moved to their native places and they will take call on returning only after they feel confident of the situation. Resuming work from the offices is also dependent on not having a third wave of Covid, he said.

"We are aware of the fact that everyone in the chain should be safe to resume operations. So, we are facilitating vaccination of the support staff as well," he said.

Top officials too have been interacting with the IT fraternity to explain Government' stand on work from office and stressed on the need to get back to offices soon as economy and livelihoods of lakhs of contract and support staff are dependent on companies resuming work from office premises, said property a property consultant.

"IT companies getting back to work from offices will be linked to the norms of their respective global offices. It looks many will start with a hybrid model and then up the occupancy later," said Ramesh Loganathan, former president of industry body Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association.