Manager: As an organization, we are keen on re-building the culture of working and collaborating in office. So, we need you to visit office at the least, 3 days per week.
Employee: But none of my team members are from my location. Each one of us are in different cities and our client is from a different country. So, this initiative is not really helpful for us. We have to ultimately collaborate with each other through online mediums, which we can achieve much more efficiently from the comforts of our homes instead of the offices without sufficient seats, no Wi-Fi and inadequate food in cafeteria, without wasting hours for commuting, which we have been doing for the past 2years with excellent productivity. Our clients don’t mind if we work remotely as long as we deliver.
Manager(stammering): Well, yes. Our client has already given exception, they are fine with us working remotely. But it’s an initiative from our esteemed organization. So, if the management has allocated seats and asking us to work from office, we have to work from office.
End of discussion.

Does it sound like a conversation in a democratic society? Sounds pretty autocratic to me.
Why Indian IT organizations are forcing employees to work from office?
Their default answer ‘team-building’, when is busted by reasons like there are no teams in a specific location to build, the head of the domain practice asked the most ridiculous question which my introverted self believed to have escaped by crossing my miserable teenage life, “Don’t you want to make friends?”
The directive is excruciatingly clear. They want people to fill their office buildings, that’s it. Even if that means employees sitting in cafeterias or open spaces like IT-park grounds. No logical reason need to be stated.
No one is allowed to ask why? What is the real reason?
In the pandemic, it has been proven that many jobs and designations don’t need people to operate from offices to perform more efficiently. On the contrary, people got much comfortable working from their homes, taking care of their families, taking care of their personal chores, being extra-productive- eating lunches while attending a meeting, stretching beyond their work hours without the pressure of traveling from and back to home. The quality of deliverability increased with work-life balance along with the satisfaction from clients.
Other benefits that no one is keen to consider- reduction of carbon footprint. Most people, especially in cities, travel using their personal vehicles burning petrol or diesel, which reduced substantially.
When I begin to wonder, who actually dealt with losses when employees got congenial with working from their personal spaces? I get answers like public transportation & automobile sector, vendors with food stalls at every corner of office buildings, various other vendors from whom the government officials in uniforms collect money regularly for letting them do their business without proper licenses, which ultimately affected the collective economy impacting the government. So, is it the honorable government of our nation pressurizing these corporate giants to force employees to get out of their comfort zones?
Is it the building owners, who are afraid they are not going to get their leases renewed if organizations start operating without buildings? Which can actually help reduce the huge amount of carbon emission from reduction in electricity generation and air-condition. But who cares about nature? Our primary concern should be making money.
So, are the business giants going to continue showcasing fake concerns for their employees by arranging fun-fridays, team lunches, yoga sessions and cherry on the top, therapy sessions?
Is no one going to question their moral and ethical integrity just because they arrange for outreach programs, to plant trees and distribute water bottles?
In the cusp of modernization where human rights are being championed and modern solutions are to be discovered to be implemented to ease human efforts, are we going to continue ignoring the wishes and mental well-being of regular employees whose labour is actually bringing in the money that’s boosting the economy, and treat them like dogs with their leashes wrapped around the hands of their employers, expected to sit when the command is ‘to sit’?
And here I was, believing, slavery has already been abolished.