India getting ready to work from office

The news is abuzz with leading dailies reporting about employees that have been moonlighting, or ‘two-timing’ their employers, so to speak, after it came out that a Noida-based IT employee was working for as many as 7 different organizations—at the same time!

In fact, a study by ResumeBuilder.com states, 69% of remote workers have a second job; 37% of them have a second full-time job while 32% have a side hustle. From running an independent small business to picking up contract-based work from multiple organizations, one job no longer seems to be enough for a majority of the workforce in 2022

You know that clause in your employment contract that prohibits you from working with another company, part-time or full-time? Moonlighting breaks this very clause.

Moonlighting basically means you have a ‘second job’ or are gainfully employed by more than one company at the same time. Usually the second job is done after hours, ie, at night, which is why it is colloquially called ‘moonlighting’

As the pandemic hit in 2020, many gainfully employed professionals lost their jobs at every level—the layoffs were not restricted to fresher's and middle management, but impacted CxO level roles too. Companies downscaled their working staff and even rolled out pay cuts as severe as 60%-75%. This left many highly-skilled, experienced and talented professionals with a meager primary source of income and bills to pay that were aligned with their original salaries. The only way to bridge the gap and meet their expenses was to take up a second job.

In fact, some companies, while not on paper, allowed their employees to work as freelancers and take up other gigs as they converted full-time employees into contract workers at renegotiated (lower) salaries.

Work from home was the new normal and companies could no longer judge the productivity of their resources through clock in-clock out time sheets, which was never an effective tool to begin with.

What also gave a boost to moonlighting is the lack of supervision, the independence to manage your time, and the performance-driven work culture, all of which were a consequence, and a boon, of remote working.

Having overcome the blip of the past two years, the commercial real estate (CRE) segment is back in the reckoning. All CRE segments, including office, retail, industrial, logistics and hospitality, are doing well now and attracting increased investor interest. Taking a host of factors into account and based on data collated by various research agencies, the outlook for the segment, too, seems bright by all counts.

With long drawn-out closure of offices and the pandemic making working from home (WFH) the new way of working, new office space requirement was severely impacted. According to a JLL India report, new supply of office space across seven major cities in India declined 30% to 36.34 mn sq ft in 2020 from 51.62 mn sq ft in the previous year. However, the recovery began last year itself and the absorption of Grade-A office space is estimated to spurt in 2022, with Delhi-NCR accounting for the majority of the demand in this segment. In fact, office gross absorption across the top six cities has already seen almost a 3-fold rise to 14.7 million sq feet during Q2 2022 as compared to the same period last year, according to Colliers.

An additional factor that has been driving the demand for more office space is the requirement of maintaining a distance of 5-6 feet between workstations in offices, in keeping with the social distancing norms. Besides, the overall normalcy and the withdrawal of most pandemic-related curbs have brought the footfalls back to pre-Covid levels in markets, malls and restaurants, and that has led to a significant boost in the demand for these segments. Here again, with new norms in place, developers are going for retail spaces with touch-free and voice-controlled features to ensure the maximum possible safety.

The recent growth in the co-working sector and an increased demand for data centres are yet another reason for the commercial sector getting a big push. A phenomenal rise in digital transactions post-pandemic has necessitated the setting up of data centres across the country with regular rise in e-commerce activities, online education, data consumption and payment gateway. With this, the demand for data centres is set to rise by 25-35 per cent in the next two years, according to reports and that is obviously a big plus for the commercial segment.

Attributing the growth in the commercial segment largely to Government initiatives, Akshay Taneja, MD, TDI Infratech Ltd, said, “The?Make in India ?campaign coupled with reforms like RERA and GST have come as a boon for the industry. Despite their initial reluctance, developers and buyers are moving to the commercial real estate sector due to the transparency and competence of the sector. The overall economic growth is also driving demand for commercial property.”

According to the latest Outlook 2022 report by Knight Frank India, the commercial real estate sectors would experience stable and sustainable growth in 2022. Also, a joint report by Colliers and Qdesq says that the absorption of office space will cross 60 million square feet in metro and non-metro cities by 2023. The tepid demand for the last two years has converted into an agile and flexible work model and this is what is driving the commercial real estate demand. Large businesses dealing in IT-Business Process Management, e-commerce and consulting would be the leading occupiers.

Since commercial spaces offer much higher rental yields, investors are obviously drawn more towards this segment. Attractive appreciation potential, recurrent rental income and tangible nature of the sector have resulted in renewed interest from them. Besides, with the investment process in the commercial real estate becoming more stable, transparent and efficient with the advent of REITs, the funding in the segment has grown manifold.

The investment by millennial NRI investors is of particular significance in this regard. According to a MYRE Capital survey, 53% of the NRI investors choose commercial real estate as their favourite investment vehicle over ETFs (21%) and mutual funds (19%), with the average ticket size for an NRI being higher, at Rs 38 lakh, as compared to a resident CRE investor.

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