Offices in Gurgaon advised by government to allow work from home

Haryana has become the latest state to advise all companies operating in Gurugram to ask employees to work from home in the wake of the spreading Coronavirus epidemic. Gurugram is home to a sizable number of offices of large IT-BPO along with foreign technology bigwigs including the likes of Infosys, Genpact, Google, Microsoft and others which have huge operations in Gurugram, which is part of the National Capital Region.

This comes after Karnataka government announced a similar measure last week.

“…all MNC, IT firms, industries, BPOs, Corporate Offices situated in District Gurugram are advised to allow their officer/employees to work from their home till 31st March, 2020 with immediate effect to prevent and control the spread of COVID 19 in large public interest,” the state government said in an advisory.


Sangeeta Gupta, chief strategy officer at Nasscom said that industry body has already sought a clarification on it which only an “advisory”.

“It is advising companies to allow work from home as much as possible and companies are already taking steps to decongest their offices but some the critical functions have to continue,” said Gupta.

Google confirmed that the company has moved from "voluntary to recommended work from home" across all of its offices in Asia Pacific including India.

"We have been taking precautionary measures, in accordance with the advice of medical experts, to protect the health and safety of our workforce. While our office spaces continue to remain open and safe with temperature screening and significantly enhanced hygiene sanitization and disinfection schedules to minimize the spread of illnesses. We have moved from voluntary to recommended work from home across all of our offices in Asia Pacific," the company said.