After nearly two years of working from home, a number of employees are reluctant to return back to full-time work in the office. One in ten said they would quit the job if forced to get back to the 9 to 5 office schedule.
For most of them, it is a trade-off between their livelihood and their life – new research has found.
According to a recent survey, six out of every 10 employees prefer to work from home and are ready to resign instead of returning to the office.
Most of the respondents across all sectors were found to be inclined to reject higher salaries and job offers that require them to come to the office.
While there may be numerous reasons for people to choose to work from home, one is a better work-life balance without impacting their work efficiencies. “It takes me at least 2 hours to reach the office and sometimes, even more, to get back home because of the rush hour traffic. I am tired by the time I reach the office and almost dead when I get back home,” says Prashant who works in a PR agency in Delhi.
Also Read: Why should so many govt departments, and corporate offices be based in or around Delhi?
As a result, there is hardly any time and energy left to spend with the family, he says.
On the other hand, those against the work-from-home culture say that the institutional culture gets diluted when people work from home.
The net result is that while companies like Tata Steel, Infosys, Mercedes-Benz India, Maruti, Deloitte, KPMG, and Philips are gearing up to allow employees to work from anywhere, ICICI Bank, Parle, Sun Pharma, Voltas, Godrej, Goldman Sachs, Dabur, Haier, Panasonic, and Biocon have finalised plans to call employees back to the office
The work-from-office model seems to be making a comeback mostly in contact-intensive segments like trading, manufacturing, banking, financial services and insurance particularly in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Even companies opting for a hybrid model, seem to favour in-person meetings and team huddles at least a few days every week.
