Date:05/05/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/05/05/stories/2006050504660100.htm

Back IT cos wake up to work-from-hometown concept

Vishwanath Kulkarni
Anjali Prayag

Connectivity, bandwidth major stumbling blocks in the process

Bangalore , May 4

If you thought work-from-home was `cool,' then you haven't heard of the hot new concept in tech town. Work-from-hometown is a concept that Silicon Valley has experimented and accepted as a best practice, and the good news is that the trend is catching up in India.

Though considered a logical extension of telecommuting, this new HR practice allows tech companies to hire and retain the best talent across the country. Global majors such as Unisys has already implemented it and Sun Microsystems is evaluating the practice at itsIndia development centre in Bangalore. The penetration of broadband, is, of course, strengthening the adoption of the concept.

Trend catching on

Says Mr Mukul Agrawal, Country Manager, Unisys India, "We have authorised people to work from different cities and it has already started." Sun Microsystems, too, has allowed `a few critical' people to work from their hometown under the iWork programme. Says Mr Hemant Sharma, Head of HR, Sun's India Engineering Centre, "We actively encourage work-from-home and in some cases work-from-hometown." Though this is more feasible for people who work in isolation like in the R&D or sales area, there are some team members who have adopted this work method.

Unisys has its India development centre in Bangalore, which employs close to 600 people. "Now, we have full time employees working from Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai and they occasionally travel to Bangalore for business meetings," Mr Agrawal says.

Nature of work

"So long as people are committed it does not matter where they work from. It also depends on the nature of work. Many of the technical staff are individual in nature and if we provide them the right technology and right tools, it works."

At this moment, less than 5 per cent of Unisys employees work from home in India. "We intend to focus on this and expect to increase it to 15 or even 20 per cent of our workforce," Mr Agrawal says. At both Unisys and Sun, `work from hometown' is a practice brought in from the US, though connectivity and bandwidth are still major stumbling blocks in the process.

It will be hard to say whether this concept will catch up with other companies.

"Everything depends on the nature of work," says Mr C. Mahalingam, Senior Vice-President, HR, Symphony Services, "Individual contributors and women going on maternity leave are most likely to opt for this."