WFH may go on till year end for tech companies, start ups

Mangaluru: While reports suggest that tech giants like Google, Facebook are expected to let most of its employees work from home ( WFH ) for the remainder of 2020, there are several start-ups in the state that are expected to follow this trend.

Springworks, a HR Tech startup based out in Bengaluru has decided to give up a portion of its office space and move to WFH till December.

Kartik Mandaville, CEO and Founder of Springworks told TOI, “Last week we made a tough decision to move to WFH till December 2020. It was a difficult decision to give up two out of three floors of our office space. Lot of hard work went into growing that space,” he said.

WFH comes with its own challenges. “To tackle the issue of loneliness and inability to mingle with colleagues in-person, we have started ChaiTime calls every day at 5.30pm. On some days we play pictionary using Zoom’s whiteboard or someone creates a quiz and the participants vie for the title of Quizzard. The quizzes we did on Zoom were fun, but we went ahead and created our own app that virtually allows you to play hundreds of quizzes right inside Slack, “ said Kartik, alumnus Manipal Institute of Technology.

Meanwhile, they have also created a common pool of leaves so if someone needs extra leaves due to kids and parents at home or just due to increased housework, colleagues who are relatively free can donate leaves for the other colleagues who might need it more. “Apart from this, we do virtual mindfulness sessions every day, celebrate birthdays over Slack and Zoom, do meme-sharing and chit-chats on random channels, “ he said.

They have recognized colleagues who have power and internet issues, for whom an Rs 10,000 per person WFH set up reimbursement has been done. They are also shipping monitors, keyboards, other accessories, and a few office chairs to folks within Bengaluru.

Swaroop Chand, CEO, Lemonop , a platform for young people to explore short-term gigs and first jobs with companies, said, “For the time being WFH will be in place till June first week, but we are prepared to go longer, even till year end if needed. For us, WFH works! We have been able to stay productive due to the Internet and collaboration software. We have channelled our efforts to the things we can actually accomplish. For example, how the crisis will impact our young users who are starting their careers is not fully understood yet and we have a responsibility to help them navigate this. We have been focusing on strengthening our software products keeping this in mind.”

Further, he explained, when we include the immense cost benefits to companies due to WFH, it looks likely that more such companies will embrace remote work. HR leaders will think about what ‘team building’ and ‘employee engagement’ will mean in the future. In order to handle data privacy and productivity questions, more products for securing WFH devices and for measuring team productivity are going to emerge and they are opportunities for start-ups. We may see a boom around home-office furniture as well, “ Swaroop, an NITK alumnus said.

(EOM)