A pinch of common sense

Not that I have huge doses of it.. but then sometimes I wonder if the society just reacts to circumstances for the heck of it.

Todays front page of Times of India reports that organizations are advocating longer hours.

Accenture too increases workhours

Mini Joseph Tejaswi & Sujit John | TNN

Bangalore: Technology firms are increasing working hours and monitoring the hours worked far more rigorously than ever before in a bid to squeeze more out of employees in these difficult times.
Some are even going to the extent of checking the recess hour of their employees, to make sure that lunch sessions and coffee breaks do not cut into their per-day productivity.
TCS had recently increased the working hours by an hour a day to 9 hours. From January 1, 2009, Accenture India will do the same, becoming perhaps the first MNC company in India to move to longer working hours.
Wipro employees already put in 9.5 hours (8.30 am to 6 pm) a day including a brief lunch break, while it’s 9.15 hours in Infosys. But these weren’t implemented stringently, until now. “It’s sort of mandatory for us now to put in 9.5 hours of work a day. Our HR seems to be monitoring it very closely these days and even a 15-minute shortage/delay is being noticed,’’ said a Wipro employee who got a reminder for shortswiping a few days ago.
Infosys Technologies head (HR) T V Mohandas Pai said the company has stringent measures to make sure employees put in the required 9.15 hours every day.
An increase in working hours will directly impact productivity and revenues. Longer hours, higher output
Bangalore: One of the reasons for companies to extend their working hours is to increase productivity and revenues. For instance, by increasing work hours by an hour a day an employee works an additional 22 hours a month. If an hour of his/her work is billed at $20, the company makes an additional billing of $440 per employee. That means, in rupee terms, a single employee can bring in additional revenues of Rs 22,000 a month for the company. Such work time extension works well for projects that are on what is called the ‘time & material’ model. Around 70% of tech projects are currently under this model, while the rest are fixed price projects where the service providers may resort to pruning the size of teams to bring cost down.
“Companies, by and large, are targeting a per-employee productivity enhancement of 15%,” said a strategist working with an MNC firm. The tech sector, he says, is given an essential services status — on par with water and electricity — in Karnataka, so companies here also need not pay overtime.
Employees are, understandably, unhappy. “Some people are good and are capable of finishing even the extra work that is given to them in 8 hours. So they are wondering why they should hang around for 9 hours,” said an employee of Accenture India. But not many are voicing concerns openly. Hiring has been frozen in many companies, so even if they are unhappy with the extra hours, employees have hardly any alternative to move to. And even if they do, they will probably still end up working nine hours or more, because that’s what every company appears to be moving to.

I thought the above only added to the company expense.  It is seen time and again and also discussed that actual working hours that one puts in a day is 4-6 on an average. It is a different matter that most of us work on and off throughout day and night when there is work.

In reality, just by spending more hours in the office whereas you are anyway going to do the same at home if you carry work home does not make sense.. it only adds to the employee’s stress or usage of company resources for free..

Cafeteria, power, labs… all cost power..

We must think of a way to save costs and get the same results and more rather than add to it..

Anyway, I am just a drop. I guess the bigwigs know better.. LOL