The hall is the “new office” at Angel Residency, a working women’s hostel in Thoraipakkam. The sofa has been moved out to accommodate a few table-cum-chairs and a long table has been introduced in the room and it can seat three people at a time.
Selva Priya’s office requires her to work out of office for a week and work from anywhere the following week. “I am a native of Thiruvanamali and I did not find it viable to do the up-and-down every week, so I park myself at a corner seat where their is adequate lighting and attend to the work,” says Priya, who works with an IT company.
Her roommate, SV Santhiya, has a different schedule. “Our office is planning to call us from the first week of May but before that they wanted us to return to the city, so I been working out of the hostel,” says Santhiya. She works between 7.30 p.m. and 4.30 a.m. and so usually has the hall all to herself.
With a good number of companies, especially in the IT and ITeS sectors, asking their employees to follow a hybrid model of working, where they work from home and office, those running hostels and paying guest accommodations are adapting to the needs of the new “home office”.
To boost broadband speed for those working from the hostel, the management of Angel Residency has increased the speed from 100 Mbps to 500 Mbps.
Green Home ladies hostel, which runs six branches on OMR, has added a desktop table and chair in each of the four-sharing rooms. It has also modified the arrangement in its living room to accommodate table and chairs. “Some of our residents wanted private broadband connection and that’s also been provided,” says G. Karthick, who runs Green Home.
To ensure there is little disturbance for those working from the new environment, Feel at Home hostel has disconnected the television sets from three of its four common rooms. “Each floor has a common area where the television is kept. All our hostellers were unanimous about this decision to unplug the TV sets from the common areas so that they can concentrate better at work,” says Subadharshini H, who has opened two of the four hostels she runs.
Now, these rooms have been provided with separate tables and chairs where three people can work at any given time. “We had some requests from our residents that they need to use a dual monitor at work and wanted a desktop table arranged for them,” she says. The kitchen is kept opened so that those working on late night shifts can prepare food on their own.
Subadharshini says demand for single room accommodation has increased post-COVID. With hybrid work, such rooms meet the requirements of those having to attend long meetings.
“Last two years was challenging for us with working professional working from home. Now, that things are slowly opening up we have to adapt to the needs of our guests,” says Subadharshini.
Have these hostels increased their rentals?
A majority of them are charging an additional amount for the electricity consumed.
