Remote working is here to stay for TATA Consulting Post-COVID

TATA Consulting a business solutions and technology company with a sizeable workforce of over 450,000 is looking to move 75% of its staff to remote working by 2025 regardless of when the COVID pandemic ends. The Indian IT consultancy previously had 20% of staff on a remote program but is looking to aggressively increase this over the next few years. “We don’t believe that we need more than 25% of our workforce at our facilities in order to be 100% productive,” said TATA’s chief operating officer – NG Subramaniam.

They had been developing an in-house platform for sometime – Secure Borderless Work Spaces (SBWS) that would allow secure remote working of their workforce which has been used with success during this current pandemic having moved 90% of their staff to this model. Experts believe with TATA taking the lead, this will no doubt force other competitors into adopting a more seamless virtual work environment moving forward. With a reduction in the need for office space, this inadvertently helps to reduce costs substantially which then also affects areas like travel, daily commute and even pollution costs.

“We have come out stronger and our model is more proven than ever before,”.

CEO – MD Rajesh Gopinathan

There is little doubt that CEO’s and leaders that continue to push more traditional approaches to working “if I don’t see you, you’re not working” will ultimately loose out in the future. Whilst they may temporarily hold the reins of power now, with an ever evolving workforce becoming more millennial that embrace flexibility and proof that the COVID pandemic allowed us dig out every workable tool to make things continue to function, this only accelerates the pace of progress as we continue to move towards a more virtual and flexible workforce. This has great benefits but will also have some detrimental consequences, for example what will happen to those workspaces? Will they become flexible WeWork style co-working spaces or residential apartments? How will we satisfy the human need as identified by Maslow to build connection and rapport with our teams? Digital can achieve alot yes but can it really address every issue or will it simply bring to surface new ones? Share your thoughts in the comments.