With the pandemic disrupting the work-from-office culture, a new survey on Thursday revealed that 59 percent of employers in India are not in favor of remote working.
According to a survey conducted by job site Indeed, 67 percent large and 70 percent mid-size Indian firms, as opposed to their global counterparts (60 percent large and 34 percent mid-size), are not in favor of a post-pandemic, remote working set-up.
Even digitally agile startups indicated they will revert to an in-office model post the pandemic with 90 percent saying they would not like to continue remote working once a solution for the pandemic was in place.
“Remote work has served as an equalizer, pushing companies to reimagine and reorganize their work models, encouraging workers to adapt to new concepts of flexibility and productivity,” Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed India, said in a statement.
More than 45 per cent of employees also said reverse migration is temporary and 50 per cent of employees said they were willing to shift back to the metro from their native place if the job demands it.
They attributed a future return to aspects like availability of work from home (WFH) options (29 percent) and bringing the pandemic under control (24 percent), with only 9 percent saying they will stay on in their native places permanently.
According to the survey, which included 1200 employees and 600 employers, only 32 per cent said they are willing to take any form of pay cut even if it means finding a job in their native place.
The willingness to take a pay cut in order to work from their hometowns decreases with hierarchy — 88 percent of senior-level employees say they were unwilling to take a pay cut and 50 percent say they would shift back to metro if their job demands it.
The pandemic has hit boomers harder than millennials in terms of job prospects and nearly twice as many boomers (44 percent) than millennials (25 percent) say it will be difficult to find a job in their native place.
Also, 61 percent of boomers are unwilling to take a pay cut to work from their hometowns.
