As the lockdown was imposed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, many employees went into the work-from-home mode overnight. Employees of Tata Consultancy Services were some of them and they might never get to go back to the hybrid model of work.

N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS, told Indian Express that merely shifting office equipment was a task in itself. “So the first and foremost thing was working with the government to say, ‘Allow us to run trucks by which we will be able to move things to our employees,'” he said. 

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The IT behemoth consists of over 500,000 employees all across the globe. So it was evident that they needed to head off concerns about data and privacy for a roster of global clients. “We had to go and talk to our customers and get their nod as well, because contractually, we are expected to perform the work only from an approved location,” Subramaniam said.

96% of the company’s employees switched to working from home within three weeks of the lockdown. The model worked so well that TCS is planning never to go back. While productivity was initially a subject of concern, the model proved to be 25% more efficient and productive, while diversifying the employee pool. 

“Many of our employees feel that they have found a solution to their work-life balance,” he added. “So, when you are happy, naturally, your productivity is better,” he said.

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New recruitments and fresh clients were added to the portfolio. TCS believes that having most of its employees work remotely could reduce its global carbon footprint by 70% by 2025, compared to a decade earlier. 

“The environment has become a lot cleaner” already over the last year, said Subramaniam.

“We are getting some new neighbors,” he added. “I’m seeing birds that I’ve not seen in my life.”

Unlike TCS, Infosys doesn’t plan to switch back to the Hybrid model with at least two-thirds of its employees at a time in the office, the rest can choose to work from home.