Work from home? Yes, but not from your hometown: Indian company’s GPS rule sparks debate | Today’s news

A working professional has sparked an online debate after sharing details of his employer’s newly introduced work from home (WFH) policy, which prevents employees from working from their hometowns and uses GPS-based attendance tracking to track their location.

According to the employee, the company recently made a major round of layoffs, reducing its workforce from 40 people to just 15. The company also gave up leased office space on the sixth floor and moved into a much smaller workspace one floor down after downsizing.

A smaller office requires a remote work arrangement

Explaining the change, the employee said that the new office could not accommodate the entire team at once, prompting management to implement a WFH rotation system.

“Since the fifth floor doesn’t have enough space for all of us, the company has decided to implement telecommuting. We are only allocated 4 positions on the fifth floor, so the rest of the team will be working from home on a rotating basis,” wrote a Reddit user.

“After a few weeks, employees who currently work from home will come into the office, while those in the office will switch to remote work.”

Here is the link to the viral post

GPS attendance limits WFH to Delhi-NCR

While the employee initially welcomed the move and believed it would allow them to work from their hometown, they later learned that telecommuting would only be allowed in the Delhi-NCR region.

“Initially I was happy, I thought I would finally be able to work from my hometown. But my boss clarified that we can only work from Delhi-NCR. To ensure this, attendance will be marked using GPS where the system will mark the employee as present only if he is in Delhi NCR,” said the worker.

The employee added that management did not provide an official explanation for the restrictions.

“The boss didn’t give a reason, but I think if an employee is urgently needed in the office, he should be able to be reached quickly. That really disappointed me. Is this what working from home is supposed to mean?”

Social media divided in company approach

The post quickly gained traction online, with some users criticizing the policy as excessive, while others argued that similar placement requirements are common across organizations.

“This is called slavery and unfortunately it is normalized,” wrote one user.

Another commented: “This is crazy. I didn’t know companies could do this to employees.”

Others suggested the arrangement could be temporary. “I believe the reason is that WFH is temporary. The company may be planning to rent a new office and go hybrid. If they allow people to move out of the city, many would vacate their homes, those with children will go to their hometowns and be accepted into schools there.”

A fourth user noted that such policies are not uncommon. “That’s how it is in big multinational companies. Also, there are many people who give stupid reasons like power and internet outage and are offline. They probably want to avoid all this.”

Disclaimer: This report is based on user generated content shared on social media. Livemint has not independently verified and does not endorse these claims.