Bill Gates Makes 'Big Statement' on WFH Amid Pandemic - Report  

As work from home model has become the new normal among IT companies, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said that the work from home culture has worked well and many companies will continue with the system even after the coronavirus pandemic ends.

Due to the pandemic, most of the countries have been under strict lockdown rules after the COVID-19 outbreak; that has forced organisations to let their employees work from home.

As per an online business summit organised by financial daily The Economic Times, co-founded of Microsoft and also the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates said; "It is amazing to see how well the work from home (WFH) culture has worked and I hope it will continue even after the pandemic is over."

"But once this pandemic ends, we will rethink on what percentage of time we spend in offices… 20, 30, 50 percent. Lots of companies will expect their employees to spend well below 50 percent of their time in offices and maybe the rest of the companies will go the normal way," he added.

Further talking about his work from home experience, Gates, said he has not travelled for work this whole year. "Honestly I have got time to do much more. It's been.. eye opening for me. WFH has not been as engaging, for which software has to improve a lot. Software engineering has surprisingly worked well but when kids are home, homes are small and there are chores, it is difficult to work. For women, they have too many things to handle so WFH comes with its own drawbacks," he pointed out. 

Further on his outlook with the pandemic and crisis, Gates said "the message from me and others resulted in very little… Even the US, from which you would expect to have the best response with the great scientific research, did a very poor job in getting ready with this and now we are faced with incredible damage."

"Hopefully we will learn our lessons and be better ready next time but in the meanwhile we have so much work to be done," he clearly emphasised on. 

"India was always going to face much bigger problems compared to Europe and the US. We hope as we get into fall, things don't get worse although the cold temperature is not good for containing the virus. Right now some great things are happening, the Premjis, Primals, the Tatas etc are stepping up efforts to minimise the damage," Gates finally added.