BENGALURU: The ongoing nationwide shortage of fuel – specifically vehicular fuel like petrol and diesel – has prompted the union government to not only discourage the public from using private transport vehicles, but also promote work-from-home. For the corporate sphere of Bengaluru, a transition into work-from-home might turn out to be easier than most of India’s other urban spaces, with a hybrid model already the norm at many prominent companies operating in the city.
The setting up of the Yellow Line metro corridor by Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) is, in this regard, of dual consequence. On one hand, it has incentivised the many companies based out of Electronic City to mandate working from office; on the other, the innate independence from traditional fuel that the metro service enjoys, offsets the concerns of travel to some extent. Rama NS, an advisor at Electronic City Industries Association, said, “There are two prominent metro stations on the Yellow Line that serve Electronic City; many companies are incentivising their employees to use the metro service by providing last-mile connectivity via shuttle services that ferry employees to and from their offices.”
According to Rama, while there is no standardisation across the board, multiple companies – especially technological companies – provide a hybrid model as optional. “As far as I am aware, some companies mandate 2-3 days of work-from-office, but many others mandate working from office throughout,” she said. According to her, manufacturing companies in Electronic City, most of which are small in scale, cannot afford to provide work-from-home due to the nature of the work and operational exigencies.
It is also an erroneous notion to imagine the absence of technological companies beyond Electronic City. An employee that works at a tech company’s office in Marathahalli said that his organisation was yet to acknowledge any intention to allow working from home. “We have not been informed of the introduction of work-from-home. To my knowledge, only one company operating in our complex allows working from home,” he said.
Another employee, working out of Bengaluru for a Gurgaon-based non-profit organisation, said that her work for the company had always been remote, and thus by definition flexible, allowing her to not be as affected as many daily commuters in Bengaluru would be.