Covid-19: Companies pull out all stops to work from home

NEW DELHI|MUMBAI|BENGALURU: Companies across sectors are scrambling to follow ‘work from home’ practices, as the government “strongly advised” India Inc to implement this and limit spread of Covid-19, while trying to ensure their operations are disrupted to a minimum.
“We have asked our companies in India to rapidly and extensively adopt work from home (WFH) to ensure employees travel only in the most essential cases, excluding situations in which they are involved in the delivery of products and services for the larger public good,” said N Chandrasekaran, shairman, Tata Sons, in a statement issued on Friday.

The ministry of corporate affairs has formally told corporate India to implement a work from home policy till March 31 and report compliance by March 23.


Hindustan Unilever Ltd which had moved before the government's guidance, last week announced that office-based employees will work from home. “ There is equal detailing and planning that has gone in making sure our manufacturing sites, sales, sales force, and R&D teams continue operations seamlessly. We have to continue to manufacture and ensure distribution of our products, which are essential goods and commodities and now more than ever,” said Anuradha Razdan, executive director, human resources, HUL, adding that 90% of its sales force are still servicing distributors.

Also, with shops selling grocery and essential products still operating, many for longer hours due to panic buying, most companies including Godrej consumer, Amul, Mother Dairy and Parle Products are putting in additional effort to replenish stock quickly.

For the services sector, though, work from home may still not be a feasible option, say companies. Puneet Chhatwal, CEO, IHCL, said the hospitality and tourism industry had not witnessed anything like this in the last 75 years. “At IHCL, we are working from home since March 16 and we have extended work from home till March 31. Essential staff is there at the hotels. The situation has worsened in the last two weeks,” he said.

IndiGo is allowing office staff to work from home from next week, said an executive, although it hasn’t given any official missive yet. The airline is also segregating airport staff into smaller groups with more frequent rotations and spacing out rostering for its crew, The latter is also helped by a lesser requirement of crew due to curtailed operations.

Telecom operators said they were strictly implementing the drill but critical service staff involved in network management, customer care, IT back-end and call centre operations were on duty to prevent services disruption. Many real estate developers too asked vendors and suppliers not to visit company offices.