India’s second-largest IT services provider, Infosys, is set to make three-day work-from-office mandatory for its employees, as per an Economic Times. This mandatory directive comes after repeated calls from management to restore regular office routines saw low compliance, it added.
According to the ET report, Infosys vertical heads have emailed employees, asking them to start coming to office at least three days a week. “It will become mandatory very shortly,” as per the email quoted in the report. Infosys has not yet issued a formal response to the reported development.
Expressing dissatisfaction with the limited return-to-office compliance, the email from the vertical heads highlighted that the three-year work-from-home arrangement following the Covid-19 pandemic had been sufficient.
The directive further stated that, except for medical reasons, employees must commence working from the office.
It may be noted that Infosys has recently asked lower-level employees to return to the office for a minimum of ten days each month.
A source told the paper that the management has voiced discontent with the company’s delivery units (DUs) going underutilised, prompting a call for immediate attendance at campuses housing offshore development centres (ODCs) for clients. They are however open to considering health-related requests from employees on a case-by-case basis, the source added.
Besides the mandatory attendance issue, Infosys in another email announced the reinstatement of charges for bus services, set at ₹150 per day with a monthly cap of ₹1,500, effective from January 3, next year. Similarly, health club facilities will incur a daily charge of ₹100, capped at ₹700 per month, starting January 1, 2024.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, eligible Infosys employees could work from home for nine days each month. This new directive, if implemented, will revive the attendance system prevalent before the pandemic-induced lockdown in early 2020.
Earlier in October, Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy expressed concerns about India’s work productivity, noting that it was one of the lowest in the world. He said that youngsters should work for a minimum of 70 hours per week if the country wanted to compete with emerging economies.
“Somehow our youth has the habit of taking not-so-desirable habits from the West, and then… not helping the country. India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading I don’t know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress. So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, this is my country, I’d like to work 70 hours a week,” Narayana Murthy said.
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