IT employees coming back to offices: Jayesh Ranjan

According to him, many employees have already started coming back to the office.

Hyderabad: The number of people working from the office is on the rise as there is no spurt in the Covid cases. With schools set to offer in-person classes from September 1, more people are likely to return to the offices, said Jayesh Ranjan, IT and Industries Principal Secretary.

Education Minister Sabitha Indrareddy had said that only physical classes will be held shortly. “This is an important message to the employees that they should start coming back to offices. Everything is safe and there is no spurt in cases. There is no alarming situation. Vaccination rates are high,” he said on the sidelines of an industry event.

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According to him, many employees have already started coming back to the office. “Those who are not here will miss out on a lot many things, for their children schools will not remain closed and they will be losing a lot by not attending in-person classes,” he said adding that online classes will be phased out gradually.

On the efforts to get employees back to the office, he said a lot of companies are open to the idea.  Some are seeing about 70 to 80 per cent of the staff back.  Some companies are taking their time. Hopefully, in a month’s time, we will see a huge change. More than 85 per cent of the staff have been vaccinated,” he said.

The Government has been making efforts to get the employees to work from the office again as it would bring back the economy on track and also provide succor to the allied industries like the cabs, cafeterias, security, maintenance, and others.

According to industry officials, IT staff in the current scenario are not keen on making their kids attend physical classes. Select schools have been sending forms to the parents seeking their consent to send their kids to the school. Many parents are not giving their consent.

The situation will improve from September through December as more staff would have been vaccinated.

Online petition

Meanwhile, there is a petition online addressed to the Chief Minister, Education Minister and Home Minister urging the government to not have in-person classes till class 8. The petition said young children are vulnerable to the virus. “We have had a horrendous second wave that claimed even the healthiest of people and by resuming schools, the third wave would be imminent and inevitable,” the petition said. It urged the Government to defer the resumption of schools till the children are vaccinated or until enough data is available that assured that Covid has been abated.

“Can’t we wait for some more time to give our kids safe schooling,” said a parent in the comment. Another parent pointed that not all schools have the infrastructure to maintain Covid norms for the full strength of the kids. IT industry body Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association, which surveyed about 200 IT companies, said in June that many companies will steadily increase work-from-office. The work-from-home percentage will decrease from the current 88% to 60% in the next 90 days.