Swiggy moves to permanent work from anywhere policy

Even as firms move to the office after two years of work from home, foodtech decacorn Swiggy has announced permanent remote work for most roles. The Bengaluru-based company will join the ranks of Spinny, NoBroker, Meesho, and Magicpin which have allowed remote work for most of their workforce.

Under the new policy, the corporate, central business functions and technology teams will continue to work remotely and converge once every quarter at their base location for a week to promote in-person bonding, Swiggy said in a press statement.

Importantly, employees in partner-facing roles have to mandatorily work from the office for a few days a week from their base locations.

Starting in 2020, Swiggy was one of the early evangelizers of a flexible working model. This bold move by Swiggy is likely to be watched carefully by more late and growth stage startups in India to consider if they should follow suit. 

Recently, Zerodha also said that up to 90% of the company’s employee base would be allowed to work remotely while its core team will work on a hybrid model.

The remote working and work from home concept have come to the fore after the pandemic and the idea seems to suit a large chunk of the workforce. However, such a  model also has many apprehensions from the employer (startup) point of view. Several startups including Byju’s-owned WhiteHat Jr asked its workforce to join work in the office but the company saw mass resignations after the diktat.

Like a forbidden fruit that has been tasted, employees, especially younger employees, can’t seem to see any issue with the idea of working from home or remote working. However, for many firms, the issue is throwing up problems both obvious and complicated, from issues of building company culture,  to training, besides missing more active on-the-job learning.

The issue is bound to play out over the coming months with hopefully more detailed and scientific analysis, but feedback seems to suggest in most cases, senior and even middle management favours office work, while more junior staff is all in for work from home. That also explains why the real estate market has not been shaken by any large-scale surrender of office space yet, though many firms do seem to have reduced office space.