For R. Sumathi, who works at an IT company in Siruseri, the drive back to her house in T. Nagar, on Monday, was harrowing. Even though she left work at 5 p.m., she got home only around 10 p.m.
On Tuesday, however, her company decided to put her up at a hotel near her office so she would not have to go through a similar experience.
After Monday’s rain threw life out of gear, IT companies decided to either ask their employees to work from home, or arranged for accommodation close to the IT corridor.
“Even on Monday night, we had a number of people who stayed over at office,” an HR official from Cognizant Technology Solutions said.
To minimize the mishaps due to unexpected traffic jams and flooding, Cognizant sent out an e-mail offering its employees food and accommodation on Tuesday night.
“As a precautionary measure, we request the project managers to have the associates who are already in office to stay back. In-house food/ accommodation will be provided by Admin,” read the e-mail.
Vignesh Sankaranarayan, who works in the internal IT department at Cognizant said, “From our office in Tambaram, I was stuck in traffic for hours together before I reached DLF on Monday night, since there was heavy traffic in Guindy and near the airport. The admin advised the employees to stay back for the night. However, a lot of employees stayed back and left late in the night after the traffic began to clear out”.
Shuttle services
He added that shuttle services from the office to various parts of the city were also made available on Tuesday.
According to an employee from Amazon, 100-odd employees were stranded since cab services were not available due to the heavy traffic in the city.
Employees on the 3 p.m. - 12 a.m. shift were the most affected due to non-availability of cabs.
“Women employees were accommodated in the conference room and in spite of the food court being closed by 12 a.m., the managers made arrangements for food for the employees who decided to stay back,” he said.
On Tuesday, most of our employees were asked to stay back, he added.
Tata Consultancy Services decided to keep their offices closed, asking only employees who were working on critical projects to come in.
Other companies were also running similar operations, with a bulk of employees working from home.
“We provided transport for employees, who are working on 24-hour support projects. We also arranged for guest house, or hotel accommodation,” an HR official from Wipro said.
According to Krishnakumar Menon, GM, Hotel Aloft, companies have been putting up batches of employees through the rains.
“They usually do it during any crisis so employees are safe and also so that their operations are managed with skeletal staff,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Deepa H. Ramakrishnan)
Companies took precautionary measures on Tuesday in view of Monday’s heavy downpour and the resultant traffic chaos
