Your cranky boss may let you work from home!

India Inc's grand plans to minimise losses this monsoon

Companies have been forced to sack employees due to the economic downturn, yet they aren't as heartless as they seem. Through a project called the Business Resilience Consortium, the corporate sector has tied up with the BMC to ensure that employees have it a little easy during the rains and that business remains largely unaffected.

Minimise losses

Raghu Raman, CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group, which hosted a networking session of theu00a0 Consortium yesterday, said, "Better preparedness and coordination among government bodies, corporates and the public can help minimise the impact of a deluge."

The impact in fiscal terms cost India Inc over Rs 445 crore during the 2005 deluge.

Most of the speakers at the session agreed that a major worry was the lack of an early warning system. The session also decided to set up hotlines between each ward in Mumbai.

Early warning

"Having an early warning system would ensure that business remains unaffected and customers are not inconvenienced," said Neeraj Srivastava, chief manager, Business Continuity Management Group, ICICI Bank.

ICICI bank is using bulk SMS packages to inform its employees of the monsoons and tide timings. Srivastava added, "To make our employees conscious about disaster management we have sent them e-mails on the rains and precautions to be taken," he said.u00a0

Khusroo Panthaky, partner, Grant Thorton, an auditing and management consulting company, advocated having the facility to allow employees to work from home.