Wipro staff gearing up for working from home

Chennai: The popular offshore concept 'Teleworking' seems to be catching up in the Indian scenario. Wipro, an IT engineering service provider, expects that 30 percent of its employees shall opt for working from home in the near future. This would mean a saving in the office resources, like office space, power and water which are spent during the office hours of an employee.

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The company has been open to this system since a long time, whereby 1, 100 of its employees are teleworking in Bangalore while in Chennai it touches 100. The number is growing every quarter, according to Wipro's Chief Information Officer, Laxman K. Badiga. "It is all about employee convenience," he said. Those who have opted for this work from home system are also satisfied. Dilip Gore, a senior project manager at Wipro, who has been allowed to work from home due to some health ailments and he needs to go to office only once a week says, "Working from home saves me a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted in travelling," says Gore.

However, there are challenges in the implementation of this model, as the mindset of the employees is yet to be moulded to achieve better co-ordination and without any apprehension regarding the salary factor. Moreover, the effectiveness of the system has to be proved to the clients or the customers, to ensure permission from them for those working on customer projects as security-related issues are to be handled. However, a positive attitude is witnessed in the company's part, as Badiga said, "At present, there is a secured virtual private network. People working in service functions like administration, accounting and HR are allowed to work from home. The right technology should alienate customers' concern on security with regard to their projects."

A similar trend is witnessed in companies like Cognizant, IBM who have given the option of working from home to their employees. Persons from all departments, including the CEO, software professionals, marketing director, HR, sales and finance, are allowed to work from home. "Face-to-face is an important function. However, there is no job that needs it 24x7," says Harini Chittu, Vice-President (application services global delivery), IBM India. And Cognizant Technology Solutions company's Vice Chairman, Lakshmi Narayanan, recently told Business Line that the company would like to see 20 percent of its employees work from home over the next two years.