Cognizant India employees have received an internal memo informing them of the end of work-from-home and asking them to be in office thrice a week.
In fact, the software firm is expected to introduce a new hybrid-work scheduling app for the India workforce, which will help managers and team leaders create schedules conveniently and reserve rooms/space at the workplace for their teams as required.
Ravi Kumar, CEO, Cognizant, has said in the memo that the over 2.5 lakh employees in India are expected to work from office for three days in a week, or as their team leaders seem fit. The US-based firm has been a little late in announcing return to office. Many firms in the information technology space have already put an end to work-from-home, with most of them having had to face resistance from the workforce too.
After getting used to working from home for almost two years now, most employees around the world are not willing to let go the flexibility they had been enjoying. The majority feel that work-from-home was good for work-life balance.
The Cognizant memo encourages employees to return to office and benefit from working in collaboration with co-workers and focus on team-building, training and other activities.
The present workforce strength of Cognizant is over 3.4 lakh, globally, of which the majority are based in India.
It is pertinent to mention here that last year, when most companies had begun to aggressively call their employees back to office, Cognizant was focusing on reducing real-estate costs.
The US-based exporter of software had not mandated a return-to-office for its employees then. Although the company had admitted that new entrants would require guidance, it had also acknowledged the fact that it would not be as effective with the managers and team leads physically absent. Therefore, at the time the company had said it would consider returning to office in a more naturally progressive manner. The company had, last year, admitted that a flexible return-to-office approach was going down well with the women in its workforce.
