Remote play @ Logitech

Working from home is the new responsible, says Bracken Darrell, CEO and President of Logitech, in his blog on LinkedIn. From October 8 to October 12, the Swiss-headquartered computer and mobile peripherals company is celebrating Work From Home week, as it believes it is good for the environment and enhances worker productivity. Just one week of all employees working from home would create emissions savings of 60,389 kg CO2, it believes.

During the week, Logitech’s 7,000 employees in 30 countries, including India, will be given the option to work from home. This is the second year that Logitech has initiated the Work From Home week.

Last year, when they put in motion the initiative, they discovered, on an average, each employee was saving 90 minutes of their time in commuting, resulting in higher productivity, says Sumanta Datta, managing director and cluster head, India, Indonesia and South West Asia, for Logitech.

He says #WFHWEEK will be a permanent initiative in Logitech’s calendar. “We also plan to rope in our partners and other companies to join us and be the champions for emission saving across the country,” he says.

A few organisations like Dalmia, Dineout, Faber-Castell, Nodwin Gaming and others are participating in this initiative with Logitech. “They will be joining hands with us by encouraging their employees to work from home on any one day of the week,” says Datta.

Of course, it is apt that Logitech, a company known for its mouse, keyboards, speakers, webcams and collaborative products that facilitate remote working, should show the way. As Datta says, “As a company, we are transforming collaboration, especially video conferencing, by offering an easy and affordable way to collaborate, with crystal-clear audio and razor-sharp video.”

During the #WFHWeek 2018, Logitech employees will be operating through Logitech’s new range of webcams and conference-cams, including Logitech BRIO & Logitech MeetUp and other intuitive products for seamless working to ensure ‘it’s business as usual’, he says.

Wouldn’t it be tough for employees in all functions to work from home? Wouldn’t some have to be in office? According to Datta, those who prefer to come to office can do so. But, he says, it is possible for all to work from home. “With cloud revolution taking place, we have made data easily accessible to all the employees of the organisation. Our teams can connect from home or sales offices with low cost and complete ease-of-use. A team member needs only good internet connection, a collaboration software such as Skype or Zoom and a good Webcam & headset for video calls.”

The Logitech belief is that it doesn’t matter where you work; it matters how you work.

The fitness challenge that Tata Consultancy Services issued to all its employees was to log a billion steps between them. The challenge, conducted between September 28 and October 7, got over 2,00,000 TCSers across 48 countries walking and registering a 300 per cent result over the original goal. They collectively logged three billion steps.

The TCS ‘Billion Steps Challenge’ is one of the employee engagement initiatives undertaken by the company as part of its TCS50 program — an enterprise-wide initiative celebrating 50 years of TCS.

TCS created a special app, in-house, for the occasion, on which employees could get a minute-by-minute view of their contribution to the billion steps initiative.

“At over 2.4 million km, this distance is equivalent to three return trips to the moon, or going sixty times around the Earth, or five-and-a-half times around Jupiter,” says the company.

HCL Technologies flagged off plans for its new Global IT Development centre at Gannavaram in Andhra Pradesh with a Bhumi Puja this week. Spread over 29.86 acres, the new centre is part of the State’s drive to create a new IT hub, and part of the MoU it had signed with HCL Technology in 2017.

Through the centre, HCL plans to attract NRI talent hailing from Vijayawada and provide them with careers in the areas of application and product development, including new technologies on demand. It has created a “come home campaign” to find talent for the centre. The company will also be investing in creating a training centre for fresher engineer graduates from local colleges.

Over the course of the next few years, two facilities with an investment of over ₹700 crore — a Campus in Vijayawada and Amravati — will come up, as will a skill development centre with 1,000-seat capacity.