Friday, August 14, 2009

Filled Under:

Indian Cos ask employees to work from home after Swine Flu outbreak

Scared that the outbreak of Swine Flu may make a dent in your business? Don’t worry. One, like many experts say, the flu isn’t that scary. Two, this may be your opportunity to experiment with new strategies, like finding out if allowing employees to work out of home is a workable idea.

While many companies, especially IT majors, have already asked employees to go on holiday if they suspect they have been infected with the H1N1 virus, many others have recognised the threat and have asked employees to work out of home.

“There are work-flow changes when employees work from home. You need to make sure people can communicate if they decide to work at home. But that said, it’s an opportunity for companies to experiment with this system,” says Jasjit Singh, assistant professor of strategy at INSEAD, France.

Companies like Ducom and Quest Global are asking people to report from home. “We are experimenting with this for the first time because of Swine Flu. But it might be possible for some staff from accounts and finance to work out of home in the future,” says Anirudh Dube, managing director of Ducom, which supplied critical equipment for the Chandrayaan satellite and is also a supplier to Tata Motors.

The company has not had any swine flu cases so far but has kept the option of allowing staff to work out of home. Though the cost savings from this experiment might only be marginal at the moment, Dube says that as the number of employees grows, the cost savings will surely be higher.

“Working out of home will easily save companies 2-3% of the cost of organisation,” says Rajeev Karwal, founder of SME advisory firm Milagrow. Karwal points out that a number of SMEs are experimenting with this concept already, even before the current Swine Flu scare. “People are starting to experiment with new ways of working.

It is a forced utilisation of technology,” he adds. If the experiment is successful and efficiency levels don’t dip, Karwal expects many companies to start using this concept in a more widespread manner and encourage people to work from home.

It is clear that if Swine Flu gets out of control, it could mean a huge opportunity loss for corporate India, and especially for smaller companies, which form the backbone of industry. “Swine Flu could have widespread economic repercussions. Remember, entrepreneurs are a mobile class,” warns Anil Bhardwaj, secretary general, Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME). But companies are looking at the positive side and experimenting with a concept which otherwise has only been debated for a long time now.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive