“We are going to start offices by July and will keep the count not more than 30% initially,” said Madhu Srivastava, group chief human resources officer at Vedanta.
Several manufacturing companies including Maruti Suzuki, Vedanta, Schneider Electric, Arvind Advanced Materials, TVS Motor, Saint-Gobain, and Ceat Tyres are reopening their offices with less than 30% attendance with new Covid-19 cases continuing to fall and states lifting lockdowns.
Maruti has started its Delhi office while Schneider, Vedanta, and Ceat Tyres plan to resume offices in July, company officials said.
All these companies already have their plants operational and are focusing on reopening offices on a rotation basis.
“We are going to start offices by July and will keep the count not more than 30% initially,” said Madhu Srivastava, group chief human resources officer at Vedanta. “While taking all caution, we are gradually looking at taking the numbers up.”
Mostly, companies plan to call those employees whose roles are not remote work friendly.
Also, many employees are seeking to return to office for work citing work from home fatigue, officials said.
Ceat Tyres plans to start calling employees from July with an initial cap of 25% attendance. The proposal is under consideration at the group level, a senior official said.
“As a company we do not want to rush the employees to offices,” said Milind Apte, senior vice president, HR, at Ceat Tyres. “However, most employees want to start coming to offices due to WFH saturation.”
Schneider Electric is encouraging managers to assess the situation of fatigue that is emerging from working from home on a long-term basis. The company is recommending a voluntary return to office.
Glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain is resuming its offices in cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Mumbai next month with 20% headcount. “Quite a lot of employees are wanting to come to the office instead of working from home,” its CEO B Santhanam said.
Ashok Leyland’s HR head Amanpreet Singh said the commercial vehicle maker is still evaluating the pandemic situation and will take a call later.
Arvind Advanced Materials is about to resume office working this month with a roster system. Unlike last year when the shutdown of global markets led to cancellations of orders, this time around the company has export orders that need to be serviced, its CEO Ashish Kumar said. “It is then imperative for business sustenance that manufacturing is allowed to function with required safeguards,” he told ET.
The company has vaccinated 75% of its workforce.
HYBRID WORK MODEL
Like most companies in the services sector, many manufacturing firms are embracing hybrid work models.
“We have mastered the way of hybrid work and would continue to follow this for a large part of the workforce,” said Rajesh Uppal, member, executive board, at Maruti Suzuki India.
Ceat Tyres has a new-age remote working policy in place, encouraging hybrid working that will continue even after the pandemic ends. “Employees will transition to this policy gradually as situation improves,” Apte said.
Due to the severity of the second wave of Covid-19 and possibility of subsequent waves, companies are keen to control the number of employees at a time not only in their offices but also at manufacturing facilities.
Factories at TVS Motor, for example, are open at a maximum capacity of 40%. “The company is using flexible attendance rosters where some functions are categorised under alternate week patterns while others have alternate days,” said R AnandaKrishnan, executive vice president – human resources at TVS Motor Company. The company has vaccinated 95% of its workforce.
Most other companies said employee count at plants is as per the state government norms.
