Interestingly around three fourth of the employees who started working from home (WFH) in lieu of the COVID-19 outbreak would like to continue the same, according to an ASSOCHAM-Primus Partners survey.
ASSOCHAM-Primus Partners Survey Findings
The said report may help the companies in deciding the future course of action, as a vast majority of employees have been working from home.
Further, the survey was conducted by Primus Partners for the business chamber across eight major cities in the country including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad.
According to their findings, 74 percent of staff would like to continue with some form of work-from-home arrangement even post-lockdown.
Apart from this, the survey findings also point to benefits that companies have harvested in letting employees work from home.
As work from home arrangement has its own benefits like location-agnostic, allowing a reduction in operational costs like transport and office premises rental.
Another reason for this selection is pointed out as the lack of confidence in public transport, even though almost all states have restarted services like buses and metro rail.
The survey also revealed that 73 percent of the respondents would like to use their own two-wheelers or cars instead of using public transport.
While only 21 percent looking have shown interest in continuing to use public transport.
This decision seems to affect car sales as there has been a rise in sales of passenger cars, with 1.97 lakh units being recorded in July 2020.
How Would This Affect?
While commenting on the subject, ASSOCHAM secretary-general, Deepak Sood said, “Technology has enabled the WFH (as) a feasible proposition,”.
He added, “While it is early days to assess how exactly things would pan out, remote working has its own opportunities and even challenges. We need to adjust fast to this paradigm,”.
But, this has a flip side too as an increase in the usage of private vehicles would lead to congestion and choke up the cities.
How To Overcome These Issues?
To make it work, the corporates and the government agencies will have to work together along with the employees to find workable solutions to tick all the boxes.
In case of corporates, they can go for staggered working hours so that everyone doesn’t need to work at the same time in their offices.
A recent study recommends having urban design changes, which promote pedestrianizing and the use of non-motorized transport to the government.
This will help in significantly decongest cities and also would be beneficial in the long run.
Another fact is Public transport improvement can not be avoided and it will have to search for various means to make travel safer for the commuters.
It must ensure that all frontline employees, be it drivers or conductors or even passengers, must wear safety gear like masks, gloves, face shields at all times.
In addition to that, contact-less washbasins with soap dispensers at offices and use of touch-free sanitizers at railways, metro stations and bus depots must be made compulsory.
These should also be some measures taken for disinfecting the vehicle after every ride.
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