NEW DELHI: The coronavirus-induced lockdown, which happened in March owing to pandemic suddenly brought lives to a halt. Many people lost their jobs as the companies were facing financial losses.
While the focus mostly went towards the labour class, those who are working as white collar jobs also bear the brunt and too are the silent victims of the pandemic.
“We had to ensure that there is no paycut...,” said Amit Sharma, principal architect and designer at design firm Axiom India on his experience of the pandemic.
“For two and half months it was tough though...all the sites were down. Sustaining an office was difficult. The first two months were bearable but by third month it was exhausting. Work has indeed suffered, it had really gone down” added Sharma.
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said that almost six million whitecollar workers, including engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants and analysts, lost their jobs between May and August. An estimated 12.5 million white-collar professional employees were employed during the wave of January- April 2016, stated CMIE.
Another joint report by the International Labour Organization and the Asian Development Bank stated that around 41 lakh of India’s youth has lost jobs because of the pandemic while employment prospects have gotten severely challenged in Asia and the Pacific.
However, Sharma noted that instead of lamenting, he rather diverted the focus on introspecting better ways of channelizing resources and merging technology with techniques for better output.
“As designers we are living in a world we create. The lockdown gave us time to look and introspect. Daily visit to sites were not possible and we have started using cameras on site. Usually, this technique is popular in abroad but now we also have started to use,” noted Sharma.
However, situation has improved for Sharma and the company with unlocking.
Though the office, located in Saket has opened up, Sharma is balancing the team with work from home and site travel.
“Commuting still remains a big challenge. As of now, three days we are working from home and two days are site visits. We need to adopt to working from home culture now,” he stated.