#Coronavirus: Infosys Veteran Says 35% IT Employees Should Work From Office; Asks Govt To Ensure

Coronavirus has brought the economy of many countries to its knees! As the cases have risen, PM Modi announced a lockdown on March 24 for 21 days in the country, shutting down all the companies and forcing people to work from home.

Amidst this chaos, India’s IT industry veteran, T V Mohandas Pai on March 24 said, “The government must allow 25-35% of total staff of information technology companies to work from their campuses because they maintain systems of their clients worldwide and industry in this country.”

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25-35% IT Staff to Work In Campuses for the Systems to Run!

The former Chief Financial Officer of the IT major Infosys Ltd told PTI, “IT companies have a business continuity plan as it is; it is for any catastrophe. They are doing it.” 

Pai’s only request is that the government must allow the key staff,  25-35% people of the total workforce to work by remaining in their campuses as they have to maintain the systems of the clients from all over the world.

In addition he said, “Everybody cannot work from home.And they have to work from there (campuses) to maintain the IT systems of Indian industry. That’s very important. So, it’s very, very vital that they (IT companies) are given some flexibility because we must make sure that this does not result in people losing jobs after they come back (when the situation returns to normal).” 

Pai also said, “After 15 days (after the COVID-19 crisis), the jobs should not disappear. So, we have to be careful and plan it properly, and not panic.”

Work From Home Not Possible for the IT Industry?

Last week, India’s IT sector companies sent the trainees back home from campuses with an aim to implement social distancing norms and reduce the spread of the virus. Most India-based IT services firms had eight out of ten employees working in centres locally. The companies may halt pay hikes and cut bonuses to deal with the business slowdown caused by sudden shutdowns.

A TCS official  revealed two days back that the work from home feature is limited only for 40% of the employees of TCS. The reason for this is that TCS cannot halt some of the back-end support as many critical utilities are dependent on the same.

Last week, Infosys had asked around 2.4 lakh employees to work from home.