PERMANENT WORK FROM HOME MAY NOT BE AN OPTION FOR INDIA'S TOP CONSUMER GOODS FIRM - REPORT 

As Work From Home (WFH) has become the new normal in the country due the deadly COVID-19, the country’s largest consumer goods maker- Hindustan Unilever may not apply the same option for the larger section of the workforce. 

“Flexibility will never come in the way of someone choosing to work for HUL — it will be a differentiator. But it doesn’t mean that we will say we will have permanent work from home,” executive director-HR Anuradha Razdan told Economic Times. 

“Face-to-face interconnection, collaboration and creativity are important," she added.

Giving an opinion about the choice of working from home, Razdan stated that it is too early to take a point of view that there will be no need for offices in future or everybody should work from home. 

“For an organisation like HUL, and for the business that we are in, physical connection, coming together, that innovation that happens when people sit around and brainstorm, the creativity, collaboration are a result of physical connections which are important for the business,” she noted.

Meanwhile amid the pandemic, HUL is taking a cautious approach on return to work. Even staff will continue to work from home till the time it is deemed safe to start a gradual process of return.

“When we open will be determined by health advisory and government’s statistics on steady decline in infection rates, which have to be observed over a period of time and even then, we will give it a few weeks before we decide to start to open offices,” she asserted.

Further talking about redesigning its workspaces with more open spaces and measures, executive director Razdan said; “We can consider redesigning our workplaces so that people can come together when they need to do so. On the other hand, when you want a quiet day and want to work at your desk, then you don’t need to be at the office — that will allow us to reconfigure workspaces and generate economies of space,” she added.

“We need to understand the circumstances of people individually … which will be governed not just by their own willingness to come (back) to work but also what’s happening in their homes, children, house help and domestic circumstances,” Razdan finally concluded.