Flipkart, Amazon test future of work
With the outbreak of coronavirus in India, top e-commerce companies, including Walmartowned Flipkart and Amazon, are testing out the future of work, and are telling their employees to work from home.
While Amazon India has begun a dry-run for work from home, Flipkart has told its 10,000-odd staff at its Bellandur campus in Bengaluru to work offsite for three days as a part of a pilot project for business continuity. Flipkart is checking system preparedness for working remotely using digital and video tools, according to people familiar with the matter. The e-commerce firm has made it compulsory for its employees who operate out of its corporate headquarters located in Bellandur to work from home, starting Wednesday for three days.
“It is being run as a pilot and this might become a playbook about how to work from home in such scenarios (coronavirus outbreak),” a person with knowledge about Flipkart’s strategy, said. The person said that given that there are millions of customers and lakhs of sellers dependent on Flipkart, asking employees to work from home is part of a plan to tackle any future eventuality like the coronavirus outbreak. “Their systems are designed to operate in such situations, but they wanted to make sure to ‘pressure test the whole system’,” said the executive. “The company is letting its engineers operate from home, making sure they have the bandwidth and secured connectivity (virtual private network), which can solve problems in the same manner as they are solving at the head office.”
The firm is promoting the use of video conferences for meetings, including job interviews, and are temporarily avoiding events and training programmes that require large gatherings. “In fact, Kalyan (Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart Group) himself comes on Google Hangouts couple of times a day to take stock of the situation and things like pricing, supply, technology, and wellbeing of the employees,” said a person.
Amazon also begun a work from home pilot for its employees in Bengaluru, according to sources. A few teams have been asked to login from home to check the level of preparedness of the systems.
Amazon employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in quarantine will also receive up to twoweeks of pay, said the company. “This additional pay-while-awayfrom-work is to ensure employees have the time they need to return to good health without the worry of lost pay,” said Amazon in a blogpost. The Us-headquartered company has also set up a $25-million global fund called the Amazon Relief Fund, keeping in mind the health of its employees. “It will be focused on supporting our independent delivery service partners and their drivers, Amazon Flex participants, and seasonal employees under financial distress during this challenging time,” added Amazon.
Infrared thermometers are being used at entry points at the World Trade Center in Bengaluru where Amazon operates out of, to check the body temperatures of visitors and staff. “Our teams are on high alert and are diligently monitoring the situation. We have not had a single suspected case so far,” said Vineet Verma, president of World Trade Center, at Bengaluru, Kochi, and Chennai.
B2B unicorn Udaan has also advised people to work from home, whereas some employees who continue to come to the workplace are mandatorily encouraged to wear face masks.