Axis Bank will reportedly continue with the Work-From-Home (WFH) culture even after the coronavirus crisis ends. Even after the pandemic, employees may be allowed to work for two-three days a week from home.
Axis Bank has a workforce of nearly 12,000 employees across India and it plans to implement the WFH model for those in the non-customer facing roles. As a pilot, the model has been divided into two departments — compliance and HR.
Axis Bank will later add other departments like risk and corporate credit and eventually roll out the model for all its employees in the next six weeks.
However, departments like treasury front-end, operations, and other employees working in branches that require physical presence will have to come to the office, the bank told Mint.
Once the lockdown is lifted, Axis Bank will open its offices in three phases. Starting May 17, only 10 percent of its employees will be allowed to work from offices. From July 1 to July 15, 30 percent of the employees will have to come to the office, and will subsequently increase to 60 percent.
“While COVID-19 has posed a lot of challenges, it has also opened up new approaches to work. Adapting to work from home/work from outside office/work from anywhere is going to provide lots of opportunities to attract varied talent pools, break geographical boundaries, give more choices to employees and is going to lead to a more structured, measurable, efficient and smart workplace. This will also remodel lots of human resources (HR) belief and practices around employee engagement, talent management,” Rajesh Dahiya, Executive Director — Axis Bank, told Mint.
To maintain safety and security of transactions, employees prone to cybercrimes will not be considered to work from home, Dahiya clarified.
“We are taking care of the risks involved in each transaction and communication over the digital platform. We could have initiated the work-from-home policy in normal times as well. Earlier, the (WFH) policy was more individual-focussed. Now, we are putting a structure in place,” he added.
Before this, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said that 75 percent, or 4.48 lakh of its global workforce, will work from home permanently by 2025, according to a report.
