New Delhi, Oct 13 (PTI) IT services company HCL Technologies (HCLTech) is mandating that employees should come and work from office three days a week, CEO and Managing Director C Vijayakumar said on Friday asserting that remote working in perpetuity “is not a good idea at all”.
The company is, however, offering some bit of flexibility to employees on what the three days can be, he said.
The comment assumes significance as large IT companies have outlined a varied stance on return to office policy. TCS on Wednesday announced that it has asked its 6.14 lakh-plus employees to work from offices, ending the practice of remote working that started due to the pandemic.
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Infosys, on the other hand, wants to remain flexible in its approach with employees, although it is seeing more and more employees coming back into the campus.
In an interview, HCLTech’s top honcho told PTI: “We are mandating that people should come to work three days a week. So we have some flexibility on what the three days can be.”
Perpetually working remote is “not a good idea at all”, he said adding “it doesn’t help the person or it doesn’t help the organisation”.
“I think it is the right thing to do. For people to get more engaged, perpetually working remote is not a good idea at all…it doesn’t help the person or it doesn’t help the organisation. So we are pushing our people to come to work three days a week,” he said. This, for employees over and above a certain level, is already mandated with “very high level of compliance”.
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“For E0 to E3, we have not mandated yet, but we are at 60 per cent levels now,” he said adding that the policy will be expanded to all employees.
There will always be special situations and instances, but as a general policy, the company wants to mandate three days a week work-from-office practice, he explained.
“It is already happening in some shape and form. It will get more formalised at the beginning of the year,” the HCLTech top boss said.
HCLTech expects overall IT budgets in 2024 to be “flattish” amid inflationary pressure and high-interest rates, but is confident that large deal wins in its kitty will provide the company a strong momentum for H2FY24.
“I think the large deals that we’ve won so far will give us good momentum in the second half of this year, which is Q3 and Q4. And what we win in Q3 and Q4 will give us momentum in FY25,” he said.
Customers, he emphasised, are spending where they are convinced about the service proposition.
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“…if you have the right service proposition, I think you can definitely continue to grow,” he said.
The inflationary pressure and higher interest rates are a reality in the current environment, he said and added that the volatility is making it difficult to take a firm long-term view.
“Honestly, if I look at it, there are two dimensions… I think there is a lot of volatility in the external environment. And of course, I don’t think we as leaders or anybody individually can do something…there are a lot of variables playing, be it macroeconomics or geopolitical,” he said.
At the same time, the rate of new technology coming in has also gone up significantly.
“So we have to double down as quickly as we can, to adopt to each of these new technologies,” Vijayakumar said.
On Thursday, the Noida-headquartered IT company posted a 9.9 per cent increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 3,833 crore in the second quarter ended September 30 on account of new deal wins and enhancing efficiency.
HCLTech reduced the company revenue growth guidance for the full year in the range of 5-6 per cent from 6-8 per cent projected at the end of the June 2023 quarter due to below-expectation performance of the company during the first half of the current fiscal.
The consolidated revenue from operations during the reported quarter increased by 8 per cent to Rs 26,672 crore from Rs 24,686 crore in the September 2022 quarter. In constant currency terms, HCL Tech revenue was up 3.4 per cent on a year-on-year basis.
“Our Q1 was weak, Q2 is in line with expectations. If you bake that in and look at the overall outlook for the rest of the year, Q3 and Q4 look very strong, based on the deals that we won, the execution that we’re doing, and the seasonality in the software business,” he said.
Despite the strong outlook for the coming two quarters, in view of the past performance blending in the full-year guidance needed a tweak, he explained.
