‘Work from home culture needs codified policy’
| Date :02-Oct-2020 |
Business Bureau ;
The COVID-19 pandemic has given a new business culture ‘Work From Home’ (WFH) to the country which is cost effective, time saving and enables the people to increase productivity but at the same time requires a well defined policy from the Government to avoid any dispute between employers and employees, said Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT). In this regard, CAIT has already sent a representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to direct the concerned Ministry to formulate protocols for WFH culture to avoid any dispute between employers and employees.
CAIT National President B C Bhartia said, “COVID-19 has brought a new business model in India and across the world. The WFH model which has evolved on its own has proved to be a successful model throughout the country. It has accelerated the transition from work in office spaces to working remotely in adverse situations.” He said that the corporate, industry and self organised sector consisting of small businesses has also embraced the virtual work culture. “This model has the capabilities to reduce the infrastructure cost considerably along with many other benefits is certainly going to stay even after the COVID crisis is resolved. It has become an integral part of trade and commerce,” he pointed out.
Considering it as a new dynamic in the working module, Bhartia stressed the need to formulate exhaustive rules and regulations for WFH working model to prevent disputes and conflicts between the employer and employees at any stage in the future. Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said, “WFH is a new system and as there is no law governing it in the country. WFH requires a comprehensive, robust policy and guidelines keeping into consideration all the related factors.” Khandelwal further said that as per an estimate about 17 per cent of expenses of any company is considered to be a cost to infrastructure and as such WFH concept makes companies save about 12 per cent from infrastructure costs as remaining 5 per cent cost is attributed to maintaining and running the office infrastructure. Moreover, it helps in reducing traffic on the roads and reduce the pollution to a greater extent.
During the COVID-19 crisis, this model has been adopted by one and all including Government, banking sector, trade, industry, health services, education sector, media, entertainment, insurance, financial services and various other sectors. Not only one to one communication but even the national and international events, conferences, meetings, annual general meetings (AGMs) of organisations and various other events including political rallies were organised on virtual world which speaks the high success of the model and its adoption and acceptance by the people, Khandelwal said. It can be considered as the single innovation of the century which has the capacity of not only reducing the cost, saving of hours of man power energy and faster execution of work. The success and acceptance of this model can also be gauged from the point of view of extensive usage of virtual conference which is popularly earned the name of ‘VC’ and has become a household name across the country, Khandelwal added.