Wipro asks employees to work from home

IT company Wipro on Monday said it has advised employees to work from home, if feasible depending upon their job responsibilities, amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Wipro said safety, health and wellbeing of our employees are of paramount importance and over the past several weeks, it has taken a series of preventive measures to protect our employees from the coronavirus outbreak.

"Given the evolving situation, beginning Monday, March 16, we have advised our employees to work from home wherever feasible and if their role allows them to do so. Wipro offices will remain open.

"Our global environment, health and safety (EHS) and crisis management teams will continue to assess the situation, review these measures after a week and decide the future course of action," Wipro said in a statement.

Many other companies like Knowlarity Communication and health tech start-up Navya also asked employees to work from home.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on March 12 issued advisory to enable around 18-20 lakh employees of IT units registered with it to work from home.

The DoT has relaxed certain norms for other service providers (OSPs) till April 30 to facilitate work from home (WFH) amid the coronavirus outbreak.

These include exemptions in requirement of security deposit and agreement for WFH facility for OSPs (IT and IT-enabled services companies), as well as the need for prior permission for offering the facility.

Industry body Nasscom and leaders of the IT industry had requested the government to relax the norms to facilitate business continuity that is posing to be a major challenge for the sector.