Yes, the trade body itself. Nasscom is planning to launch a campaign on social work. It will cajole the 2.2 million IT employees to chip in for social work in spare time. Infosys has given the same kind of call to its employees few months ago. It has created a sabbatical option where the employee can work for an NGO and get half the salary from Infosys.
Not sure how successful that program was, but Nasscom is trying to do has many reasons to succeed. More often than not, many people have spare time and are willing to work for a cause. But, the lack of information and network is a deterrent. Nasscom is trying to tie the loose ends of working for an NGO.
Nasscom is creating a user interface (website) and is linking up the back-end with the NGO’s. It will be launching this in July.
“We are tying up the backend of this database and it should be up by July. So far, we have partnered with 75 NGOs in 13 states. The database is such that we can also give reports about the volunteers to their respective companies. It may create goodwill since the companies treat it as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) tasks,” (Business Standard)
This is a very good initiative, instead of asking the employees to go work for an NGO – which is very vague. Companies like Wipro and MindTree have their own initiatives but employees might often feel the need to do something else which matches their interest. Nasscom’s initiative fits the bill.
There is a flip side too :
It’s a good approach, but IT companies should not use this as a tool to keep their bench (unutilised human resources) engaged, by paying them a paltry sum. Secondly, NGO work is also not that simple and it has lot of challenges. You can’t take fish out of water and put them in ocean without proper counselling,
So true. With a new platform in place companies might use this as a strategy to utilize their bench strength. There will be a difference in the way an employee performs in an NGO on voluntary basis and the employee who is forced to do it.
I hope the employees will be sent on a voluntary basis.
Once this service is live, would you opt for it?
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