- A growing number of companies in Dhaka are asking employees to work from home amid the growing fear over a potential coronavirus outbreak in Bangladesh as the country reports its first death and confirms that pandemic has reached local transmission level.
- Country’s largest telecom operator first announced that it asked all of its employees to work from home. Soon other telecom operators including Robi and Banglalink followed suit. BRAC, the world’s largest NGO announced yesterday that it asked its people to work from home.
- Local tech startups have been mulling over the decision whether to take a remote work decision or not for the last two weeks. A large number of small and big tech startups have announced remote work protocol for workers in Dhaka and new companies are joining every day.
- While a growing number of companies are adopting remote work, the total number of companies announced company-wide remote work remains slim. The number is likely to rise in the coming weeks.
- While remote work is quite a common practice across markets, this is the first time a large number of Bangladeshi companies are embracing remote operations.
- Many business leaders fear that the changes due to the outbreak in the market could negatively impact their business.
Why it matters: As the fear grows in Dhaka, a growing number of companies are embracing remote work as a measure to limit the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic. This is an unprecedented event in the sense that remote work is not something that a lot of companies in Dhaka adopted before.
- Since the remote work protocol came suddenly, most companies are likely ill-prepared to operate successfully remotely and deal with the changes caused by this disruption.
- As a result, the disruption in the routine of thousands of employees is likely to negatively impact productivity and business.
- For employees, this could both be a good thing since they could work without going through excruciating Dhaka traffic and the risk of transmission. Similarly, it could be a challenge for productivity since working from home is far from a standard procedure for most people.
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