– Dr. Nandagopal, Vice President, AIMS & Director, XIME, Cochin
“For the last 2 months, the ‘Work from Home’ concept was adopted in some fields. This concept suits people in IT industry than those in other sectors. But even still, it is not in our culture to work at home and manage such practices for longer period. There is need for continuous network connectivity in this concept and not all employees can afford to have that uninterrupted data supply at home.
In manufacturing industries, one of the factors that decides the development in productivity is the return of migrant workers. The Government has relaxed lot of labour laws like increasing the working hours from eight to ten. But we cannot say that this could increase the productivity.
Companies may not be able to commit new orders. Even if the foreign nationals (to which we import) open shop, the customers in that market should buy. The purchasing attitude is expected to return very slow around the world. When manufacturing sector faces difficulties, engineering jobs also stand to get affected.
Organizations will find implementing social distancing as a major challenge. If attention to cleanliness and social hygiene is not given, it could have a heavy impact. Labour management will be a high hurdle to overcome in the coming days.
Though we find that several sectors will get affected due to this crisis, there will be new business models and people will learn to follow that more than ever. Take farm produce distribution and education sector for instance. Changes will happen and we need to adapt”.