Swiggy rolls out permanent work-from-anywhere policy

Food delivery platform Swiggy on Friday announced a permanent work-from-anywhere policy for majority of roles.

The decision was arrived at based on team needs and feedback from several managers and employees who vouched for the flexibility and increased productivity working from home has given them in the last two years, the food ordering platform says in a statement.

“Today, Swiggsters are working out of 487 cities in 27 States and 4 UTs across the country,” it adds.

Under the policy, the corporate, central business functions and technology teams will continue to work remotely and converge once every quarter at their base location for a week to promote in-person bonding.

“The first Jamboree of the quarter was held in June 2022 and was a huge success with teams coming together after almost two years,” the company says.

Employees in partner-facing roles are, however, required to work from the office for a few days a week from their base locations, it adds.

“At the core of our Future of Work is Flexibility. Our focus was to enable employees with as much flexibility in their work life within the contours of their job. We observed global and local talent trends while also having our ears to the ground listening to the pulse from employees, managers and leaders. This led us to introducing ‘work from anywhere’ as a permanent option for employees giving them the convenience of flexible cycles of work and leisure wherever they may be,” says Girish Menon, HR head at Swiggy. “We will continue to actively invest in reimagining employee experience, innovations in work and workplace experience to build a truly remote-first organisation.”

Swiggy claims it was among the first few organisations in the startup space to operate on a flexible working model for employees based on the nature of their work. The startup believes the permanent work-from-anywhere policy will act as an enabler for its employees.

The decision comes in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has forced a lot of companies to offer work from home arrangement to employees, especially those who work in the services sector where most of the work can be done online.

The government too has notified a new rule, which allows 50% of the overall staff of a company based out of a Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to work from home for a maximum period of one year.

In April, San Francisco-based vacation rental company Airbnb allowed employees to work from anywhere. Big new-age firms like Twitter, Facebook, Coinbase, Lyft, SAP, and many others have either done fully or partially remote.