Edelweiss MF CEO feels firms must trust staff with WFH; says in hybrid work culture, motivation matters and not location

The coronavirus pandemic has left deep scars on employers. In order to make up for the losses, most companies are hoping to get its staff back in the offices once the pandemic ends. They are organising vaccination camps and pushing for inoculation statuses of employees aggressively .

However, those who have embraced the work from home (WFH) culture for over a year as the new normal, are becoming more hesitant than ever to return to office.

Adam Grant, organisational psychologist at Wharton School and author, shared a Bloomberg article - titled 'Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home' - on Twitter and emphasised on the importance of remote working.


The 'Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know' author urged leaders to reconsider the WFH model as companies managed to navigate through the pandemic only because of remote working. "Hey, leaders trying to cancel all remote work: did you forget we made it work in a pandemic?" he questioned.

In his post, the 39-year-old professor spoke about how productivity is a result of purpose and process, not place, and it's time for companies to become flexible. "It's (productivity is) driven by why and how we work — not where we work (from). Flexibility is here to stay. Those who reject it may not be," he wrote.


Quoting Grant's tweet, Edelweiss Mutual Fund MD and CEO Radhika Gupta, who is a Wharton 2005 graduate, said that introducing WFH is the company's way of showing that it trusts its people.

In the end, companies need inspired and motivated employees, and the location they work from doesn't matter, the 38-yer-old MF boss stressed. "If people are motivated, they will work from anywhere. And if they aren’t inspired to work, there is no physical place that will make them do so," she added.


When a curious user asked the industry leader's opinion about a hybrid culture which includes a mix of remote and office working post-pandemic, Gupta promptly replied "Yep." She further confirmed that her company has been following the same format in its offices.