WORK FROM HOME AT IT COMPANIES– THE NEW NORMAL

Work from Home” has become the new normal during theCovid’19 pandemic. The Information Technology giants companies are considering ‘Work from home’ as a permanent solution to the increasing rental costs and overhead costs. Work from home has not affected the productivity of the employees in most cases. IT Employees also stand to benefit in many ways in terms of flexible working, reduced travel, home atmosphere, less pollution etc. This study was taken up through a survey of 103 IT employees to understand their perception on ‘Work from Home’. The study intends to identify Factors influencing their perception and the Challenges faced by them during work from home.


Research Article
The study mainly depended on the Primary data collected through a well-structured Questionnaire distributed in the city of Chennai alone. The Secondary data was collected from journals, magazines, books, articles, research papers and websites.  Data Instrument: Well-structured Questionnaire DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS Part I:Demographic Profile of the IT employees

FACTOR ANALYSIS
Factor Analysis aims at grouping the original input variables into factors which underlie the input variables. Each factor will account for one or more input variables. Theoretically, the total number of factors in the Factor analysis is equal to the number of factors in the study can be reduced by dropping the insignificant factors based on certain criterion. Here, the results of Factor analysis carried out on the variables of Benefits and challenges of IT employees work from home were given below The KMO measures the sampling adequacy (which determines if the responses given with the sample are adequate or not), which should be close than 0.5 for a satisfactory factor analysis to proceed. Kaiser (1974) recommended 0.5 (Value for KMO) as minimum, values between 0.7 -0.8 as acceptable, and values above 0.9 as outstanding, in this study to test the sampling adequacy, the KMO test was carried out and its value0.878 is satisfactory.

Respondents perceive Two important factors to be influencing the WFH option namely:
 Favourable/ facilitating Perceptions  Un-favourable perceptions Table 4

-Rotated Component Matrix( Favourable) COMPONENTS--FACTOR1 -FAVOURABLE PERCEPTIONS
Loadings With availability of sophisticated online collaboration tools, WFH provides the best of both worldsdeliver more at work, while spending more time with family or pursue other interests as well (great work-life balance).
.857 WFH enables greater productivity as one can work at the times one feels energized, taking breaks according to convenience, and can give their bestin terms of both quality and quantity. .853 Since there is no travel for WFH, it leads to less fatigue and hence greater productivity.
.827 WFH enables greater flexibility w.r.to working hours, thereby leading to better adjustment when working with teams and customers across different time zones.

902
WFH results in delays and loss of productivity due to non-reachability of colleagues, network disturbances, etc. .

892
WFH creates operational and practical challenges when close collaboration is required between team members. .

830
WFH results in a sense of feeling isolated, and sometimes depression due to not being close to colleagues to whom you can reach out for help or vent your feelings in office. .810 It is very easy to cover up loss of productivity or doing less work in WFH, leading to a negative impact on team's/organization's delivery commitmentstime as well as quality. .

797
WFH results in missing the personal connect that comes with face-to-face interactions with team members, staff, customers, vendors, etc. .

763
WFH causes harmful side-effects to the body in the long run, due to increased screentime and increased use of mobile or other phones. .

744
WFH causes an unhealthy lifestyle due to being in the same place for hours together (without any movement), binge eating, irregular meal and sleep times, etc. .692 WFH causes over-working due to no fixed working hours, resulting in burn out. .675 WFH results in greater cost for the company to provide, for example, ensuring suitable infrastructure and connectivity, access to remote servers and labs, collaboration tools, etc. .617 Source: Computed Data Challenging factor comprising 10 important variables were identified using factor analysis. Their loadings signify the importance assigned to the factor. Top 5 Challenges to WFH are :

ONE-WAY ANOVA
In statistics, One-way analysis of variance (abbreviated one-way ANOVA) is a technique that can be used to compare means of two or more samples (using the F distribution). This technique can be used only for numerical response data, the "Y", usually one variable, and numerical or (usually) categorical input data, the "X", always one variable, hence "one-way". The Tables below reveal the association between the two factors and the Demographic or Usage Profile. Existence of an Association is reflected by the significance level below 0.05    ( mean score 0.410). Nearly 31% of the respondents work for long hours.

chi-square analysis Association among the USAGE PROFILE of IT employees and OVERALL PERCEPTION ABOUT WORK FROM HOME
In the below mentioned analysis the researcher attempts to find out, the distribution of two groups of IT employees who prefer to Work From Home(WFH) and Work At Office(WAO)over the demographic profile of IT employees, Their Network usage profile, Company's Support & Home atmosphereand its findings are presented in the following cross-tab and chi-square analysis. Chi-Square establishes existence of Association between the variables. 103  There is significant association between Age of the respondents and preference to work from home.  It is observed that the majority of 'Below 20' prefer to work from home; while those between '20-30' prefer to work at office. Source: Computed Data There is significant association between 'Home atmosphere' and the respondent's preference to work from home. It is observed that the majority of people who have good home atmosphere prefer to work at home while those who don't have a suitable atmosphere prefer to work at office Study reveals that there is influence of demographic profile, net usage profile, organisational support, home atmosphere and nature of job, on the perceptions of the employees. Favourable influences:Employees of age above 50 years prefer to Work from home.Employees who spend more on Internet charges have responded in favour of work from home. Employees who receiveinternet allowances from company have favourable perceptions than others. Majority of the respondents working for long hours (10hrs and above) prefer work from home. Unfavourable Influences: Married employeesdo not prefer work from Home. Experienced Employeesdo not favour Work from home.Study indicates that most respondents DON'T have separate space at home for work (62%) and majority of them feel that there is hindrance from family member/others during work from home (52%). Home atmosphere is a highly influencing factor on the preference for work from home. Youngsteres below 20 years of age prefer to work from home than those in age group 30-40. There is association between availability of gadgets at home and they type of apps used for meetings on the perceptions. Since support by way of internet allowances from companies influence the employee's perception, more companies should consider providing such allowances. Most of the employees are not provided allowances. From the above findings it is clear that the transition to 100% work from home will take much longer. IT companies, in near future, may prefer to work in blended mode with Work at Office for those tasks for which close coordination is required and Work from home wherever it can be flexible. This will be beneficial to both employees and the employers.