NASSCOM’s Policy Recommendations: Harnessing the potential of Work from Home

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NASSCOM’s Policy Recommendations: Harnessing the potential of Work from Home

Devika Agarwal

@DevikaAgarwal

May 21, 2020

Public Policy

8160

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NASSCOM has recently submitted its recommendations to the Government of India on enabling Work from Home (WFH) and harnessing its potential. NASSCOM had in the past (i.e. before the advent of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic) made several recommendations to the government on facilitating WFH for the industry especially for employees working in special economic zones (SEZ) and on reviewing the need for the telecom Other Service Providers (OSP) terms and conditions including those with respect to employees of BPM companies to WFH. The primary reason for this was to enable industry to incorporate flexible working models. Due to the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, WFH became necessary and critical for enforcing social distancing norms and protecting public health and led to certain temporary regulatory relaxations. It also highlighted the need to further strengthen our telecommunication infrastructure, especially in the context of WFH.

Given the available technologies and an impetus from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, scaling up of remote working can offer significant advantages. These are highlighted in our recommendations. NASSCOM believes that over 3-5 years, upto 60% of IT industry’s work and upto 40% of the ITES work could shift to a WFH model

As some of the recent, pandemic driven, relaxations in laws by the Government of India and State authorities have demonstrated, the legal framework is not designed with a WFH perspective. Therefore:

This is an opportune time to review and make most, if not all, of the current remote working relaxations permanent.
In addition, this is the time for a holistic review of the legal framework to improve the ease of doing business so that WFH does not face unnecessary restrictions. Instead, the regulatory framework should be supportive. It should keep in mind the nature of specific sectors as a one-size fits all approach is less likely to be effective.
Third, the Government, being the largest employer and in order to complement industry’s initiatives, should rapidly move to online collaborative working. This will improve its own productivity and will also boost the IT industry as both the Central and State Governments and their undertakings would need to increase their purchase of the technology solutions.

A sustained WFH is difficult for many reasons and may not even be desirable beyond a certain point. Some of these aspects are discussed in our recommendations.

There is certainly a need for a wider discussion on WFH related issues. However, we believe that there can be no debate that the regulatory policies should enable WFH. Restrictions which are redundant should be removed and conditions which do not apply well in the WFH scenario should be appropriately adapted. Some of these are identified and discussed in this note.

We encourage you to read our full submission below and give us feedback. We continue to engage with the government on creating policies with the objective to tap into the full potential of WFH, and welcome industry suggestions on how best to achieve this.

Reference: IT seeks changes in laws as work from home set to become norm: Nasscom is reviewing labour laws from WFH perspective and will submit a report next week. By Surabhi Agarwal, Megha Mandavia, May 13,2020; See: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/it-seeks-changes-in-laws-as-work-from-home-set-to-become-norm/articleshow/75684748.cms

Work from home #OSP WFH other service providers SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

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Devika Agarwal