'Cab facilities, WFH option, insurance': What employees want to return to office

Companies around the world are luring employees with offers and incentives to push them to return to the physical office premises. While Goldman Sachs has offered employees free breakfast, lunch, and ice cream at offices in London, New York, and Hong Kong, Amazon has bought more than 100,000 cups of coffee from local vendors for its staff in Puget Sound and Arlington headquarters.

In India, several firms, including top IT companies like Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys have either started or are in the process of calling employees back to the office in a phased manner.

A recent study by LinkedIn has found that one in three professionals in India is burnt out due to increased workload and stress, as the pandemic forces them to work remotely. As many as 35 percent of people surveyed said they have experienced increased workload working from home, and 34 percent said they experienced stress, which is why a majority of people have favoured a hybrid model of working.

Deval Singh, Business Head — Telecom, IT& ITes, Media and Government, at TeamLease Services says the first question that candidates ask these days is “is this a work from home job?” Singh, who has been in the hiring business for a long time but wasn’t used to this question until the pandemic struck, says she sees easefulness in the interviewee when the reply to this question is a ‘yes’ and they feel like taking the conversation forward or else they might just look for other options.

When asked about incentives that existing employees are being offered, the TeamLease official pointed to the rotation system already in place across organisations and added that companies are considering other measures, including both monetary and non-monetary.

“They're figuring out customised ways of employee engagement,” Deval told CNBCTV18.com, adding that one of the good ways to call employees back is to hold upskilling programmes, where they can learn something new, elevate their portfolio and also feel welcome to come to the office.

People don't realise that they have lost social capital in the pandemic times while working from home, she said, adding that this is the trigger that HR is trying to work on. “Of course, there is the ease of not having to commute, ease of not having to worry about anything else. You just sit on your desk and get on to a video call. It can lead to lethargy. HR right now is playing a very critical role in triggering the importance of social capital, which has gone missing in the last year and a half,” she explained.

While the plans of monetary gains have not gone live yet, Singh says companies are thinking about it to motivate people to return to the physical space. She, however, said highly pressured firms are giving new joinees a 5 to 10 percent bump on the agreement that they work from the office.

Meanwhile, Sugam Jain, Founder & CEO of logistics and shipping firm Shyplite, which has already started calling its staff back to the office, says that apart from sanitisation drives and vaccination costs reimbursement, an additional medical cover for employees and their families has really helped boost morale.

Jain said his company has provided an additional health cover of Rs 3 lakh, over and above the CTC, to every employee and this may even be increased and will continue alongside the standard medicare plan that the firm offers.

On the other hand, Aastha, an employee of the Gurugram-based startup, says while it’s nice and refreshing to be back at the office and interact with colleagues, the concerns about contracting the virus during shared travelling remain. The company’s co-founder also shared his thoughts on the issue and said the employees were being reimbursed for all cab expenses after the first wave when transportation was limited.

“Today, we are balancing it out in a manner that anybody has to come to office only for 10 days a month. So that gets sort of balanced and Metro is also working with a limited capacity. So the government has made sure that the metro is safe. And we are making sure that nobody gets a very heavy burden of the transportation costs,” he said.

Talking about the roster in place, Jain said the earlier 10-7 fixed timings have been dropped, and there is a flexi timing policy, following which employees can come between 9 to 11 and complete their shifts accordingly. “This flexi timing has got a lot of positive feedback from all the teams and they embracing it and coming to office,” he said.

Moreover, before the pandemic, Shyplite allowed two working from home days in a month but Jain says, going forward it may be increased, to say five, however, it is not final yet. Speaking about the leaves that people are taking if they or someone in their family contracts the virus, he said there is no salary deduction happening due to that, a move that is being appreciated by employees.

“The hybrid model is the model of the future. That means, that there will always be a balance between how many days you're going to work in the office and how many days you're going to work at home,” TeamLease’s Singh said.

Post the pandemic things will go back to normal, but she admitted that these perks are very important to motivate people to return to office. If not a salary hike, firms need to spend money in a way to ensure that people see value in coming back, even if it is as simple as building programmes, like digital programmes, leadership programs, or upskilling programs so that people come to the office, connect with each other, see the value and see the social capital that they lived in so long and feel connected back.

Meanwhile, Jayita Ekka, Content Head at CollegeDekho, also acknowledged flexible working hours as a plus point for returning to the office. “Initially, there were healthcare sessions that were organised by the company for the mental well-being of its employees from leading hospitals. We also had a vaccination camp that was set up for the employees across the branch offices in India at subsidised rates and getting sessions around mental well-being from leading hospitals,” she said.

While both employers and employees are endorsing the hybrid model of working, a BBC survey earlier this month suggested that most people do not believe workers will return to the office full-time after the coronavirus pandemic.

A total of 70 percent of 1,684 people polled predicted that workers would "never return to offices at the same rate". The majority of workers said that they would prefer to work from home either full-time or at least some of the time, the report said.