Work from Home and Job Satisfaction among IT Professionals in Chennai: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The imposed lockdown, due to the COVID-19 crisis, led to a “new normal” of working from home concept.  Businesses globally have responded to this crisis by adopting ‘work from home’ model with the intent to carry on their operations and customer service. Similarly, the Indian IT industry catered to their customer’s needs by gearing their operations for continued service – with the adoption of Work-From-Home (WFH) in a wide scale. The critical question is if this will sustain in the long term. Globally, IT and technology companies are assessing the WFH as a viable, long-term strategy. According to a recent report by NASSCOM, the Indian IT sector is a fast-growing sector of a young workforce. Currently, more than 5 million people are employed in the $227-billion IT industry, making it the largest employment generator in the country. Thus, in order to achieve the optimum performance from employees, the companies should take proactive measures for them to adapt to the changed workspace and contribute effectively to the organisation. This study explores how the sudden shift in the working style impacted the job satisfaction of IT employees based on an empirical investigation. The research study identifies the important factors in ‘work from home’ model affecting employee’s job satisfaction working in IT sector in Chennai, India with the application of multiple regression model. The study also provides more insight into the sustainability of the WFH model and has enormous policy implications in the IT sector.