54% of Indian companies lack resources to allow work from home: Report

New Delhi: In the wake of coronavirus, organisations around the globe are recommending work from home for their employees, but for Indian firms, the practice doesn’t seem feasible. According to Gartner, a leading IT service management company, 54 percent of the companies in India do not have required technology and resources for employees to work to home.

While it’s relatively easy for employees of companies like Google and Microsoft to work from remote locations via video conferencing and collaboration tools, workers from the non-IT companies and small and medium enterprises (SMBs) are struggling with the idea.

Most of them have age-old laptops, poor network and connectivity with no UPS backups and little knowledge about how to handle group chat and collaboration software like Zoom, Google Hangouts Meet, Microsoft Teams and Flock etc.

The Gartner report says that 54 per cent of HR leaders have cited that poor technology and infrastructure for remote working is the biggest barrier to effective remote working.

Another obstacle in front of the companies regarding the ‘work from home’ model is that the office internet is usually very fast as compared to the broadband connection that employees may use to log in from home.

Instead of halting operations, however, businesses can choose to shift towards remote working methods with teaching non-IT staff on how to use the latest digital software to connect and work, say industry experts. This, however, will take some time and may hamper productivity in the short run but is a win-win situation for the non-tech companies in the long run, in case any such global emergency arises in the future, says the report.