Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy urged companies to encourage their employees to come back to the office now that the worst of the pandemic seemed to be behind us.
“I am not a great fan of work from home at all,” the information technology veteran said at Bengaluru 2040, a summit organised by DH on Friday, citing the practice’s impact on company culture.
Murthy said it was very difficult to build a culture of hard work, imagination, excellence, intuition, meritocracy, discussion and debate if people worked from home.
“When people work from home, that institutional culture will slowly become weaker and weaker,” Murthy said in a virtual session.
Working from home does not work well in a country like India where many employees live in multi-generational households, have poor Internet bandwidth and do not have a separate room to convert into a home office.
While working from home was necessary during the worst of the pandemic, Murthy urged corporate denizens to get back to the office to boost productivity as it was really important for a nation like India which wanted to overtake China in terms of per capita income.
He highlighted how India’s productivity was less than that of Bangladesh, a nation created just a little over four decades ago.
As per official data, India’s per capita income was just over $1,900 in the financial year 2020-21 versus Bangladesh’s $2,227 and China’s $12,551.
Murthy also cited the example of Germany in the 1940s, which worked for “over 16 hours a day and 6 days a week” to rebuild its economy after the second world war.
“I believe in emulating that as it is the only way we can elevate our economy and follow China,” Murthy said.
Many companies, especially in the information technology sector, allowed their employees to work from home during the pandemic but now they are trying to bring their staff back.
“My wish is that all the companies get back to office at the earliest,” Murthy said.
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