In March, a crucial semi-final cricket match between Australia and India during the world cup led many to "fall sick" and shoot off emails to their employers – in some cases, days in advance. While many took the falling sick route to watch the match on TV, many companies such as KPMG and travel portal MakeMyTrip anticipated this enthusiasm well in advance and offered a day off for the D-Day, even as many others arranged for big screens and snacks at the office itself.
While an off from work for every important cricket match is nowhere in sight for employees in India, the specific incident points towards the way Indian companies are changing to keep the wishes of employees in mind. Corporate slavery might sound like a cliché from the time of the industrial revolution, but the phrase often pops up in conversations among young people in the country when they talk about their work. While many multinational companies are far from following best practices when it comes to employee benefits, at least some of them seem to have finally understood that time off from work is as, if not more, important as the time spent on the job. Thus, arrived the concept of "unlimited leave" in the western world – and India.
Soon expected to enter India, video streaming company Netflix, with its headquarters in Los Gatos, California, United States, has already stirred up more than a storm in a cup by offering unlimited maternity and paternity leave for the first year to employees who have a child or adopt one. The company insists that employees shouldn’t worry about work or finances while managing a growing family and they could return part-time, full-time or even take more time off as they deem fit. The company's chief talent officer Tawni Cranz wrote in a blog post:"Each employee gets to figure out what’s best for them and their family, and then works with their managers for coverage during their absences."
Earlier this year, in June, Virgin Management – part of the Virgin Group, founded by Richard Branson – announced a policy of one-year paid parental leave at its two European offices, though it was limited to those with four years’ service at the company. Virgin was not the first to offer this incentive as the same is also offered by companies as diverse as Zynga, Groupon, Glassdoor and Evernote.
Closing the door
In India as well, companies are fast catching up with the global trends by liberalising their leave policies for a slightly different reason. The idea, here, is to make working at a company more attractive and curtail attrition rates in fast growing companies, be it the startups or blue-chips which often witness employees leaving for better perks elsewhere.
Job satisfaction among employees working in the private sector in India has hit an all-time low according to a survey concluded last year by Paycheck India, which is an initiative by the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad. While 44% of respondents across all levels of seniority responded that they considered themselves to be underpaid, only 22% were happy with the employee welfare activities of the organisations.
Responding to high attrition rates which translate to huge costs in terms of hiring the right people only to see them leave in a short period, Indian organisations are trying to improving employee benefits one perk at a time.
A 2013 survey by Watson Towers India noted that 60% of companies in the country planned to review their employee benefits policies in the coming years even as manpower costs are rising across the board.
Leave pools and sandwiches
Accenture India, for instance, has introduced an innovative leave pooling system called ‘Hours That Help’ which allows employees to donate their excess unused leave to a pool which can be availed by their colleagues in need of extra off days. This allows the employees to get more days off work without compromising on their salary and the company also doesn’t have to dole out extra leave for emergency needs of its people.
Apollo Munich Health Insurance already provides a similar leave pool for employees to take advantage of in the emergency situations such as illness of a family member. The company also offers work-from-home options to employees in their time of need.
Subsequently, many companies including Siemens have hailed the program and expressed interest in introducing something similar for their employees even as compulsory time off-work policies do exist in many big and small firms.
Those seeking an extended weekend off for a vacation often face the problem of sandwiched leave where employers count weekends as work-days while calculating total leave taken if the employee is absent from work on both Friday and Monday.
Now, companies such as Vodafone India, MTS and Coca Cola India have done away with the practice of counting sandwiched weekends into the leave, accepting that an extended weekend off doesn’t have any considerable impact on organisational productivity.
Policies in different companies are clearly seeing a time of transition. Vodafone India, for instance, doesn’t allow Casual Leave to be sandwiched with weekends but allows it do be done with Privilege Leave and Sick Leave.
For marriage and mourning
Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart moved recently to offer a new leave policy to employees which it hopes will help them maintain a better work-life balance through crucial events in their personal life. Now, employees who have been with the company for more than two years can take one to six months' unpaid time away from work as a career break to focus on their interests.
Similarly, those getting married can claim five days off while those who lost a family member can claim unlimited leave to grieve and recover from the loss.
In addition, the company has also increased maternity leave to 24 weeks plus four weeks of flexible working hours for women and also offers one-year career break without pay, if required.
Automaker Mahindra and Mahindra, meanwhile, makes it mandatory for employees to take at least 14 days off work to relax and pursue an activity of their interest.
Too much to leave?
While it is yet to be seen if increased time off work is able to curb attrition rates in these companies, the trend line is clear as more and more are expected to follow given industry signs that point towards better work conditions. However, what remains is the constant complaint of many Indian companies working six days a week instead of five in much of the western world.
Amidst this, many experts have already said that unlimited leave policies might not be a perfect fit for Indian companies where working conditions are often centred around "being at the workplace" more often than getting things done.
"India is yet to mature to this flexibility as employers and employees still believe in time spent in the office rather than productivity on the time spent," executive search firm GlobalHunt India MD Sunil Goel told Economic Times.
Echoing this, a Godrej spokesperson told the newspaper that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to leave and emphasised that his company promotes unlimited sick leave which is based on trust instead of an arbitrary number of fixed days allowed.
The success of any initiative will lie in how well it is crafted for or adapted to the particular company, their team members and the socio -cultural backdrop that they operate in,” he said. "Sick leave is now uncapped and trust-based because we don't believe that you can put a number to falling ill. Godrejites can avail of it on a 'need to' basis."