Employees push for WFH option as house help takes off for voting duty
New Delhi: There’s a sudden spike in work-from-home across Indian cities, with many employees forced to juggle office work with household duties as domestic help and support staff travel to their hometowns to vote in the ongoing state elections.Staffing firms reported labour shortages across sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, hospitality and facility management, while consumers in big cities complain of frequent no-shows on home services platforms such as Urban Company and Snabbit.
“The facility management business is impacted,” said Lohit Bhatia, chief executive at staffing and recruitment services firm Quess Corp. “Help crisis has also exploded in large condos and large societies in Delhi-NCR, Karnataka and Chennai, with many leaving for hometowns for voting.”
Staffing company CIEL HR Services said a significant number of workers are on extended breaks to travel to their hometowns for polls, causing a noticeable shortage in delivery executives, pickers, packers, housekeeping staff and security staff.
“Since these roles require physical presence, the impact is immediate and visible across sectors such as manufacturing, logistics and supply chain, hospitality, construction, real estate and facility management,” said Aditya Mishra, chief executive of CIEL.
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“At the same time, we are seeing a parallel trend across sectors such as IT, retail, consumer goods, and services, particularly in hubs like NCR, Bangalore, and Pune,” he said, noting that a significant number of white-collar employees also have travelled back to their hometowns to cast their votes.
Vidhu Goel, founder of Wonk Tutor, said all the help apps are overbooked while the rate of cleaning in Gurugram has doubled. “Even after managing to get a slot, people are not turning up,” she said. Goel has been trying to manage home and office for the last two weeks.
Vishakha Mahajan, a professional working in Noida, said, “Getting a slot on these platforms is like playing roulette…you are forever out of luck.” She now plans to buy a dishwasher and robot cleaner.
A Snabbit spokesperson agreed that there is a workforce availability issue across metros at an industry level but noted that it’s “not unusual during large regional events such as elections.” “These are short-term mobility patterns rather than a structural shift,” the person told ET.
Companies including Tata Motors, RPG Group and Savills India said they are allowing remote work to ease daily challenges of their employees.
“In the current context, we have received some requests for work from home, which we have readily supported, as we do during any such situations,” said Kaushik Chakraborty, chief people officer at real estate firm Savills India.
