The Hindu Business Line : Work-from-home: Cognizant gives the concept a new dimension

Cognizant Technology Solutions could be your dream employer. The company has put in place a work-from-home concept that could well change the way a fifth of its employees live and work two years from now. Working from home is not new. But the scale at which Cognizant is planning this is, given its headcount of 58,000 at the end of March this year.

As a pilot project, it experimented with about 50 people, in production support, assigned to a specific client. These people, who typically work unearthly hours, fondly referred to as the graveyard shift, have been given laptops, can access client data securely over a virtual private network and remain available to clients as long as needed.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman, Cognizant, said, “We would like to see this way of life expanded to about 20 per cent of our workforce over the next two years.”

Seniors included

The company is now extending this to senior people, that is, managers and above. Currently, 800 managers work as per the new schedule. Work profiles that require people to be on the move, meeting clients, for example, are encouraged to work from home at least one day in a week. Mr Narayanan says, “I, too, am part of that group.”

Asked if the new rule stems from fuel price increases, Mr Narayanan said, “It’s not just the oil price hike. We have been experimenting with this for about a year.” He says that several factors contributed to this. One, the cost of a laptop is now almost that of a desktop. Two, the cost of communication has come down while its reliability has gone up. “Be it from Reliance or Bharti, you get better quality, and more secure connectivity now compared to a couple of year ago,” he said.

Three, instant messaging software is now universally used. “So, clients can routinely chat up our employees to see if they are available on line.” It also helps that employees can save on rising fuel costs. “It’s an alignment of stars,” that has led to the new rule, he said.

20:20:20 programme

Does Cognizant have a savings target as well? Mr Narayanan says, “If a fifth of our employees work to this rule in two years, it would mean 20 per cent savings in investments in real estate, a 20 per cent increase in productivity of our employees and a 20 per cent improvement in customer satisfaction levels since these employees would be available on demand.”

He calls it the 20:20:20 programme at Cognizant. And you thought only Twenty20 was exciting?