Centre to incentivise work-from-home jobs

Centre to incentivise work-from-home jobs

1. The Indian government is planning to launch a scheme to boost work from home jobs in the IT sector. The scheme is likely to be launched as phase II of the India BPO Promotion Scheme.
2. India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) was launched in 2016 under the Digital India Programme. It aims to create employment opportunities and promotion of BPO/ITES operations across India in order to have a balanced regional growth of the BPO/ITES sector. Under the scheme firms are incentivised to set up operations in tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India.
3. Under the work from home scheme, it is proposed that employees be provided support for the cost of laptop/ smart phone and broadband connections. Further, salary-based incentives would be provided to incentivise employees to continue such work from home jobs.
4. Under the proposed scheme, employers would be provided 50% of the actual expenditure on technical infrastructure required for enabling such work from home jobs, with a cap of ₹10,000 per job. The scheme may also extend relaxation in labour laws.
5. The proposed scheme is significant because a) it would create employment opportunities particularly in the BPO sector, particularly for women and differently abled persons, b) It would increase the available talent pool for the sector.