Between the mountain of deliverables set by my company and the looming pile of dishes I need to wash at home, I don't know which challenge is larger,” says 28 year old Advaith, who works at an FMCG company in Chennai. From march 20, this young professional, like many others, has had to work from home. But what had been a 10-hour workday, including travel, has turned into a nightmare for many professionals across the country, as they begin to ease into the concept of working from their homes. Employers, they allege, have forced workers to set aside the traditional concept of work timings and have adopted 'waking hours' as the new measure for productivity, to set deadlines and even to hand out new projects.

 

Several employees who spoke from various sectors pointed out that their managers assume that they slack off more when they work from home and pile work on them. According to these employees, projects, which were originally meant to begin three months later, have already been initiated. While ideally a limited number of tasks should have been assigned at a time when household work, mental stress and hurdles are increased, several companies have done the opposite. In addition to this, the lack of necessary infrastructure high speed internet, hardware or privacy at home, has added to the frustration of workers.

 

Even the union of IT and ITES employees (UNITE), has raised this matter of additional work given to employees. They have demanded that work hours be reduced to six hours for the duration of the lockdown, without the expectation of meeting usual levels of productivity. UNITE also demanded that a law be enacted where employees have the right to disconnect after working hours. “Work from home blurs the line between work time and personal time. This leads to expectations to check and reply to their work phone calls and emails out of work hours.

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