Work-from-home IT firms’ new mantra

One such Pune-based company, Zensar Technologies, has been designing a ‘Global Delivery Platform’ — a model that would facilitate organised allocation of tasks to employees who would be sitting at remote terminals.

In sum, Zensar’s operations _ analysis, design, programming and testing _ would be handled by employees by installing the necessary softwares at their homes. A central hub would be be the nodal coordinating body that would distribute, collect and assign work to the employees or the associates.

Says Ganesh Natarajan, managing director: “Our plan to intitiate at least 50 per cent of our workforce onto this model in the next few years, which would mean that roughly 3000 of our employees work from the comfort of their home in the next three years.’’

So what has been driving Indian companies to adopt such work models?

For Sun Microsystem’s India arm, it was employee convenience that prompted the move. “Most of the employees working at our 900-strong R&D team in Bangalore have the option of working from home. The system is most convenient, as these research personnel are part of our global organisation and need to conference with the US teams even late at night,’’ says Hemant Sharma, HR head for Sun India.

With the widespread availability of reasonably priced broadband connections across the country, Sharma feels such models are bound to proliferate among other companies as well.

For Zensar, however, one of the motivating factors was the crumbling infrastructure. “In Pune itself, at least Rs 1,000 crore would be needed to revamp the entire road system and since that seems unlikely, we have had to come up with alternatives. In fact, we have decided not to invest in any more campuses across the country,” says Natarajan.

More specifically, it would reduce costs of the company by almost 40 per cent once the project is implemented. “According to our studies, we estimate that productivity would boost by 30 to 40 per cent by disaggregating the components. Add to that parameters like time spent in commuting, and you have a further jump in productivity of about 15 per cent,” he said.