Work from home (WFH) in the IT/ITeS corporate, a dilemma for the Human Resources and the Associates

Abstract

Remote working, telecommuting was an important part of the Information Technology (IT)/Information Technology enabled Sector (ITeS) across the world, considering the fact that the Global Delivery Model (GDM) architecture itself promoted an engagement with the corporates in the delivery of IT solutions. Whilst organizations had made internal rules vis-a-vis remote working, telecommuting for projects being delivered internally and even for client-based projects; where associates would be embedded in client location; the works of providing IT solutions was going on with ease. However, the pandemic of 2020 changed the scenario on a larger scale leading to many issues that hitherto were unseen in the IT/ITeS corporate on the Work from Home (WFH) scenario, as a large workforce (at times 100%) had to work from their respective homes. The research paper is a work in progress, wherein the researchers want to create a body of knowledge and baseline data, which will help in augmenting quality information for better understanding and analysis and generate strategy in the organizations which making decisions on WFH. The researchers have spoken to Human Resource (HR) Managers across organizations to get a perspective about the same as well, which will be part of the research paper. This will help in articulation of thoughts which will further the interest of the HR Managers in particular and the organizations in general. As has been seen, the HR Managers had to change their way of operations during the pandemic leading to short and long-term changes in the actions. The research team has reached out to 2200 respondents/associates across the country from Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 IT/ITeS entities and are in the process of collating information for the baseline data generation. The respondents have been expressing their views through the digital questionnaire about i) the challenges of WFH, ii) the reasons for WFH preference, iii) views on hybrid work models, iv) WFH impact on teams, team building, bonding and the finer aspect of collaboration. The results that we have been getting so far reasonably look towards an acceptance of the WFH measures, and also apprehensions in various spheres which will be the deliberation of the research paper.