Can Indian IT industry really adopt Telecommuting post the Corona Virus issue

Indian IT Industry traditionally never believed in Telecommuting (aka Remote working or work from home), even though this industry existed in India for over 50 Years. Earlier years offshoring has been a game-changer in this industry globally because no one would have thought that in the 60s that Technology work can be outsourced to a remote location from where the work gets executed.

Tata Consultancy Services under the then leadership of Mr. FC Kholi made this possible and no wonder he is revered as Father of Indian IT Industry and this industry today owes its allegiance to his vision.

Globally it took lot of time for clients to accept the reality, that the work needed to be done in a remote location for two main reason cost and talent available to meet the expansion. While this generation may not know the difficulties that were faced by late 90s Indian IT companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL to name few in selling and delivering the IT work that too convincing clients to deliver from remote location i.e. India

Clients had concerns mainly with respect to data protection, deliverability, and the unsaid concern was losing control, which happened to be the difficult change management issue.

This lack of control or losing control is still an issue but the western world has matured to accept them mostly & learned to live with this issue. In India the IT companies still hold this stigma.

IT companies like IBM, Accenture, Cap Gemini et al that allow telecommuting in their respective countries, don’t feel comfortable when it comes to allowing the resources to work from remote locations in India and insist to have the team located together.

Even splitting the team between multiple facilities within a city or different cities is resisted siting reasons like collaboration, working in a team effectively but the real reason is losing control and lack of trust.

Indian IT company’s senior and mid-managers also have caught themselves in this bandwagon and do not prefer their team to be in remote location leave alone entire or significant portion of their team telecommuting.

While most of the reasons quoted like it’s a team effort not independent contribution, mixture of team pyramid (experience levels), ensuring the security of the customer data, coordination between different teams etc are all perfectly valid, the main reason is “SELF EGO of losing control”.

They all want to see their team in front of them to believe, (baring a few occasions where resources have to remotely work due to unavoidable reasons). Hence to enable resources to telecommute first and foremost is the change the mindset of the mid to senior management. Only then the rest of the stakeholders in the value chain like the client or other counterparts can be convinced about the possibility of remote working.

Covid 19 has given an opportunity, where the personal ego and mindset has been overruled by the need to survive and stay in the game. IT companies across India scrambled together and tried to enable their resources to work from home by moving desktops to employee’s home, enabling connectivity and even providing a secure connection facility.

What a prudent leader could not achieve this, a pandemic was able to show the way in the shortest time frame. Now that the top management has seen the possibility, they at least are betting that remote working will be an option to look for. The 2^nd biggest cost of any IT company incurs in India is the facility charges.

Facility charges includes real estate, maintenance of office space and other infrastructure associated with that like connectivity, telephony, collaboration suits (Video Conference facilities), electricity, transportation charges. This will amount to any way between 20 to 25% of the overheads.

If Indian IT companies learn to work as a team by its members telecommuting at least up to 50% then they can save easily up to 10% of their overheads if not more. Another important aspect that generally overlooked is cost of replacement of resources due to attrition.

One of the major reasons for attrition especially with Indian women is marriage relocation and family life. While many young women try to overcome these challenges. If only they are allowed to work from home, then the companies will stand to retain them much longer. Many Indian IT companies lose over 50% of their women workforce when the women reach the age of 30 and rehiring them at later stage still is a difficult option

Benefits of Telecommuting the employees:

• Access to Unreachable Talent pool, companies are no longer constrained to look for a team within a city for their projects either new hire or existing talent available at a different location
• Boost creativity and productivity, this can be termed both benefits as well as drawbacks. But when the possibility of remote working evolves, the resources save a significant amount of time traveling to the office, time wasted in multiple breaks induced by peer groups, above all one gets to work with leisure from home
• Improve employee retention including the diversity factor, since resources can work remote, they need to relocate from home location and optimize their personal savings
• Reduces cost, two important factors drive the cost down one being the facilities cost which may save with 50% remote workforce will reduce least 10% of overheads and max 20% of overheads depending on the real estate price, the 2^nd factor is employee cost. Surveys shows that most people working remotely are willing to take up to 10% pay cut if they are allowed to work remotely

Drawbacks of Telecommuting / remote working:

• Learning and Sharing, one of the main advantages of working in a single location is sharing and caring by the team and an opportunity to learn from seniors and experts which is priceless both for the employees and the company
• Data Protection and Security, another important issue to overcome is the protection of IP, data, and other security protocols. Statutes in different countries demand various data protection essentials and enabling and ensuring them on behalf of the team spread across locations is difficult but doable
• Team has to be extremely self-motivated, especially now when companies try to move towards this model, apart from the management even the team needs to feel united and not isolated. Being in a location and meeting keeps the relationship growing and adversaries learn to work cohesively

Having said that post Covid19 era when IT industries open up in full strength the learnings will be enormous and companies will attempt to make remote working an integral operating model to evolve for the future.

TCS already announced they aim to reach 75% remote working by 2025 which is an ambitious target but where there is a will & compulsion there is a way. In the 1960s this company showed and paved the way for outsourcing as a concept and once again is in a pole position to pave the way for telecommuting for IT work in India. Other companies won't be too far behind in this journey.

Let’s hope for the best.