Tata Steel has come on the forefront among the corporate sector in the country to provide relief to the families of the deceased employees by announcing social security schemes.

The announcement made in a statement issued on Sunday enables the family of the deceased employees’ nominees to get the last drawn salary till 60 years of age along with medical benefits and housing facilities.

“Tata Steel’s best-in-class social security schemes will help ensure an honourable standard of living for their families,” the company said in a statement.

In addition to this, for all its frontline employees who as part of their job, met with an unfortunate death due to Covid-19, the company said it would bear all the expenses of their children’s education till graduation in India.

“The company has always been a shield of steel, supporting its stakeholders at all times. This time is no different. Tata Steel family stands stoically with all its people, committed to their security and well-being,” the statement said.

Company sources said over 70 employees have died in the second wave of the Covid-19 this year across all its operations, including Jharkhand and Odisha.

Tata Steel was amongst the first to have introduced trust and outcome based working culture in order to give more flexibility to its employees with the launch of the ‘Agile working models’ from November 2020.

Under the new working models, even the officers who required to be based out of a particular location can now work from home for unlimited days in a year, giving the employee the flexibility to operate out of any location in the country.

The policy ensured better work-life balance, more flexibility to choose where one lives as the daily work commute shifts out of consideration, provides working opportunities to new parents at their convenience, and ensures continuity of work for Persons with Disabilities in their respective work-enabled environment.

Tata Steel had also come up with the Pod concept to keep its workers safe from the Covid-19 across its operating locations, which is multi-layer protection to break the transmission circuit. These measures are beyond the stipulated SOPs.

One of the important aspects of the Pod concept is modularisation of the workforce into pods.

The idea is to divide the staff seating arrangement into small units, called Pod, thereby restricting the inter-pod movement.