Mumbai: With Covid-2019 cases rising every hour in India, many employers are mulling ways to keep their employees safe. While some are suggesting work from home, others are offering services like hand sanitisers, gloves and face masks to their staff.
Then there are new-age companies who have issued detailed employee advisory and various preventive measures to keep their employees safe from Covid-19.
Tech Mahindra has gone a step ahead by introducing a slew of measures. Tech Mahindra chief people officer Harshvendra Soin said, “We have a panel of doctors on standby across all locations who are educating associates, sharing information, dos and donts etc.
Restrictions have been imposed on domestic and international travel with immediate effect. We have postponed all internal events which required large gatherings and everyone has been advised to adequately leverage technologies like — tele presence and video conferencing.”
A content manager with a pan-India content management company, said,
“All our employees are asked to work from home for the next two weeks. While we work from home, the workload will be as usual for us as we have to meet deadlines and that cannot be deferred.”
With two techies from different multinationals diagnosed with coronavirus, the other tech firms have sprung to action by encouraging work from home.
IBM has asked its employees to work from home to test waters and see what happens if a China or Italy type lockdown happens. In the past, e-commerce, tech firms, online aggregators and many new-age firms encouraged work from home. The policy worked smoothly for them.
For institutions where physical presence is important, several sanitation measures have been adopted to protect the employees from the virus. Pradeep Chavda, HR director, Sodexo India said, “Employees who can work from home are asked to do that.
But those who need to be physically present at various locations, they have been asked to wash hands every two hours. An alarm rings every two hours to alert employees to sanitise hands.” He added employees are divided among two groups, to restrict less attendance in the office.
Meanwhile, in the case of medical representatives, doctors and hospitals are not allowing them entry.
A pharma professional said, “We have been asked to postpone such meets due to the virus. While field visits have been postponed, employees are asked to report to their office.”
