Coronavirus may not be the only reason companies will allow work from home

Today when Zomato issued a blog stating that employees can work from home indefinitely, there were reasons. One of them was to reduce real estate costs. The company said that their "highest recurring expense" after paying salaries is real estate. i.e. they have empty offices for which they have to pay rents but they are not earning so much. That may be a side-effect of the Coronavirus, but this trend is here to stay.

Employees have to work from home, irrespective of the Coronavirus affecting them in a good way. Twitter, Google, Facebook and Amazon have already asked their employees to work from home. Why? They fear that their employees will be affected. this may be ethically right, but is it professionally? Zomato answered that question too. The blog read, "Given how well we have been working from home, we have decided to make partial or full work from home a permanent feature of our lives."

Why Work-from-home?

One, it saves cost. Second, it is technologically feasible. Third, employees are still productive. A backend handler need not commute to the office when he/she can handle the same work from home. Remember when Microsoft announced four-days-work-week? Not only did it have more employee efficiency, but they also reduced costs. Microsoft Japan said that it became more efficient in several areas. The electricity costs fell by 23%. And as workers took five Fridays off in August 2018, they printed nearly 60 per cent fewer pages.

So when a large technological work-force will work from home, imagine the reduction in cost. Similarly, more and more work is becoming ore tec-enabled. Communicating to employees is possible through Zoom meetings and constant texting and task update on Slack.

Certain jobs may still require office interference. Some jobs will need employees coming to the office regularly. But, where it is possible, work-from-home is here to stay. Especially where work can be done on tech-enabled devices; even after this Coronavirus lockdown ends.