No Permanent Work From Home For Employees Of India’s Biggest FMCG Company: What’s The Reason?

At one hand, many market leaders, banks or IT companies are planning to create more flexible and collaborative working models for working from home.

The country’s largest consumer goods maker, Hindustan Unilever said that permanent work from home may not be an option for the larger section of the workforce.

What Does HUL Say?

The executive director – HR for Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Anuradha Razdan said, “the future of work would mean more flexibility, collaboration and open workspaces, though permanent work from home may not be an option for the larger section of the workforce,”.

“Flexible work schedules would never be an issue for some who chooses to work with the FMCG major” she added.

However, “it doesn’t mean that we will say we will have permanent work from home,”, she added.

Emphasis On Face To Face Communication And Creativity

While talking about the importance of face to face communication, she said, “Face-to-face interconnection, collaboration and creativity are important.” 

Further, she said that it is “too early” to decide that offices will no longer be needed or that everyone should work from home.

According to her “For an organisation like HUL, the innovation that happens, the creativity, collaboration are a result of physical connections which are important for the business,”.

Currently, HUL is taking a cautious approach on return to work. 

Till the time it is deemed safe to start a gradual process of return, their employees will continue to work from home. 

Razdan said, If the current rate of decline in infection continues, HUL may start to think of coming back to office by the early part of next year.

Other Market Leaders View Towards Work From Home Model

After over eight months of the work-from-home model, now companies are looking into different options.

They are thinking on different real estate strategies like shared workspaces, sub-leasing and expanding to tier 2/3 cities. 

Noteby, the work from home model is still evolving.

Apart from that, the companies are yet to see a major cost benefit from the new working model.

Another fact is, the company has already invested in and  continues to invest in WFH and employee benefits. 

In the meantime, top IT firms witnessed their employee-related expenses increase for the six months ended September 2020 compared to the previous year.