On March 25, the entire country had to be put in lockdown to stop the coronavirus from spreading any further. We are currently in lockdown 5.0 which will remain in effect till June 30. There are certain relaxations that are allowed in this phase to make sure that economic activities can resume.
Under phase 3 of Mission Begin Again announced by the Maharashtra government, offices can now resume with 10 per cent workforce or with 10 employees, whichever is less. This phase 3 begins from June 8, which is today.
In the morning, there were huge jams seen all across the city as people rushed to get back to their offices. While it is imperative that people get back to work and the economic activities can start but there is also the risk that the number of positive cases will spike. Mumbai is indeed one of the most impacted cities of India. The number of cases in Mumbai is hovering around the 50,000-mark. Due to all these factors, we reached out to various small and medium scale companies in and around Mumbai to ask how comfortable are they to have employees back in the office from today and more importantly what are the preparations that they have been done to make sure that it is a safe working environment.
“Excess2sell.com is all geared and we are ready to re-start the office from 8th June 2020 under Unlock 1.0. We have already made arrangements for the basic care as prescribed by authorities including obtaining the required permissions from the local MIDC and are planning to resume with staff strength of 10 or less. We have sanitised and disinfected the office premises and are taking this step to start the Back to Work process. Over time we will keep on building as the situation improves and the environment is conducive for operating at full capacity,” says Rajan Sharma, Founder & CEO, Excess2sell.
EFFICIENT Insurance Brokers Pvt. Ltd. is also geared to open its office but wants to keep the staff in office limited and focus more on going digital. Talking to Mumbai Live their CEO, Gaurav Palliwal, says, "We at Efficient Insurance Brokers plan to keep limited staff only for back office and all safety measures are taken care of as Sales can be driven from Home and Market itself. The total focus is on Digitalization as being into the insurance industry, going digital has played a very crucial role wherein the sales have picked up and that too safely.”
While some companies are ready with their arrangements, there are others who are taking a cautious approach.
Amit Tuli, CEO of Studio Unees told Mumbai Live, "While we welcome the move to open offices and giving individuals the liberty to choose but we would still like to wait a little longer to get people to work from the office setup completely. We did use this opportunity to mobilise things and take all the things that we needed from the office but until it is not absolutely essential, we have asked our employees to continue to work from home".
There is another valid point put by Brahmanand S Siingh, Founder-Chairman & CEO, Mobius Films & Mobius Biopics, that the lockdown is being lifted it is gradual manner for to economic reasons and not because coronavirus cases have gone down or are under good control. He adds, "Ours must be among the rare countries where the lockdown is being relaxed even when the curve is still on the rise. Even successfully controlled places like South Korea are seeing a fresh spurt of cases. A lot of West is mysteriously oblivious to the impending danger and it is appalling to note the way they have been conducting themselves. But closer home, we need to step out, work and interact, I feel, only if necessary, urgent and with enough precautions/regulations. So, de-facto and self-driven lockdown needs to continue for a much longer time, at least until the curve starts showing signs of flattening".
He further insists that we need to find ways to adapt to the ‘New Normal’ and work efficiently, keeping in mind that vaccines will take at least a year to come and that the modus operandi for all of us have undergone a paradigm shift — some for the better, some for the worse, but all of it, outside our sphere of control.”
Husain Habib, Co-Founder and CMO, Hats-Off Digital Private Limited talking on similar lines thinks that since we are now entering the most critical stage, it is advisable to now have employees continue to work from home. Talking about the same, he said, "As an employee-centric organization, we value our employees and understand the gravity of the pandemic we are experiencing. While the work needs to go on, we as a digital media agency have decided to keep resuming office premises on hold for now."
Another major concern for people to resume work in Mumbai is transport. A large part of the population rely on Mumbai locals for transport and they remain shut. The same concern is shared by Bhaskar Tare, Co-founder & Director, Gloocal Communications Pvt Ltd, who says, “The main mode of transport is local trains, which are still not working. We are already losing business and the overheads are also high. If we are calling employees to use private vehicles and come, then it is an added cost. The whole month we will do work from the month as we have been doing for the last two and a half month".
Setu Shah, CEO, PROSE INTEGRATED takes the same conversation on the transport forward and says that it is not practical to tell employees to take their private vehicles and travel from all the way from Dombivali to say a Bandra. He further adds, "Even if they do start to commute, there will parking issues and traffic snarls to deal with".
Another interesting point that Shah adds is that reinforcing social distancing in an office set up with AC running and people using the same pantry and facility area will be challenging and in such a scenario there is a possibility that you may running a risk of the entire team falling sick at the same time and the work coming to a standstill. "So if all members are infected then it is a bigger challenging. While one understands there should be social distancing but how much of it can be maintained in an office setup," reason Shah.
Most organisations also thought that from an employees perspective it would indeed be better to have them continue to work from home.
There are also others that are not just looking at the welfare of the employees but looking at cutting overheads at this time. Ami Shah, who is the co-founder of IntelliAssist shares, "while we welcome the move but given the situation and how the market is fairing, we have decided to save costs and let people continue to work from home. Since I run a digital marketing agency, we can work virtually without any hiccups.
Another major challenge is for people who had been sharing co-working spaces. Talking about the same, Shah of PROSE INTEGRATED says, "Even if co-working space is now allowing only 50 per cent strength, even then it is a big risk as we have no control over the others that we are sharing the space and our employees are our responsibility so in this time it is a big risk".
These are unprecedented times and people are looking at ways to best deal with this challenge to keep their workforce safe and at the same time get the work back on track. The need of the hour is to take the call which is best suited for their business and to see how they can maximise the resources that every organisation has on hands. There are offices in Mumbai that have already announced that their workforce will have to work from home till the end of the year and there are others who are looking at continuing to do till at least the end of the month and from there on have a more calibrated approach to resume work and perhaps have only people that are staying close by to report in for the initial period post lockdown 5.0.
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