‘Work from anywhere’ at Grant Thornton

Mumbai:

Grant Thornton Bharat

has joined a growing list of companies to offer its employees the flexibility to ‘

work from anywhere

’. The company has also introduced an ‘unlimited leaves’ policy. The 4,500-plus strong firm earlier offered 20 days of privilege leave to its employees.

Under the new policy, individuals can choose their location of work and visit offices only when necessary. Additionally, the new model gives employees the option to ‘work from home’ forever. The company is also in the process of optimising workspaces across the country, moving towards a model of multiple offices to give easy access to its people, rather than one big office in a city.

Grant Thornton Bharat CEO Vishesh Chandiok said, “The pandemic has taught us that working from offices is not the most effective use of our infrastructure. We now offer alternative career paths to individuals who choose to ‘work from home’ permanently. This will allow people to work out of smaller towns and cities and stay close to their families.”

On unlimited leaves, Chandiok said, “The earlier maximum is the new minimum (for leaves). We live in a new world where a culture of total trust is the foundation. We trust our people to effectively manage their work.”

Last year, a number of companies announced policy changes around flexible working. RPG Enterprises framed a policy to allow its sales people to permanently work remotely. The group empowered office-based staff to work from home 50% of the time. Axis Group, on the other hand, said it will hire skilled talent that can work with the bank remotely and from anywhere. Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas too adopted a permanent ‘dynamic working policy’, which allows teams to work in a combination of onsite (work from office, or WFO), and offsite (work from home or anywhere).