'Human brain gets saturated beyond 8-8.5 hrs': Motilal Oswal tells employees to switch off from work after shift

Even as the debate continues over working hours, stock broking firm Motilal Oswal Financial Services has come up with a new policy under which employees will not be allowed to work beyond their fixed shift timing of 8-8.5 hours. The move is aimed at improving employee wellness and productivity, group chief HR officer Niren Srivastava told The Economic Times.

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Under the policy, named 'switch-off', the Mumbai-headquartered broking firm will shut down its email servers, and employees will be logged off from sending or receiving emails, both internally and externally, after a 45-minute grace period after the shift hours. If anyone stays beyond his or her work shift time, the person will be asked to vacate the office premises.

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Speaking about the new policy, Motilal Oswal, the group managing director and CEO, said that it was not the number of hours that mattered, but what mattered was the employees' peace of mind, satisfaction, well-being, and productivity. He said this new policy was essential because it gave the employees the freedom to put their health and well-being first.

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The responsibility of implementing new policy across all offices has been given to the admin and HR departments. The new policy will be applicable to about 9,500 of its 11,000 employees as the top executives and employees from private equity, asset, and wealth management, and investment banking have been excluded due to their own work schedules.

The group's chief HR officer said that the "human brain gets saturated beyond 8.0-8.5 hours", and the firm should not undermine the added commute time. He said his group's philosophy is that they expect people to come on time and leave on time. 

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"Work starts essentially when one leaves home and ends when one reaches back home, so organisations also need to factor in the 3-4 hours travel time that people sometimes spend in Metro cities," he was quoted as saying by ET.

The broking firm's new policy for 8.5 work hours is in contrast to what some of the entrepreneurs and executives suggested recently when they batted for 12-14 working hours a day. The debate began after Infosys founder Narayana Murthy suggested youngsters should work for 70 hours a week.