Scrooge dons Santa’s robes

BANGALORE: It’s a long Christmas-New Year vacation for tech workers in Bangalore this year. Santa is shooing them off on forced holidays, some of which end only in the second week of January.

IT companies want employees to use up pending leave, but don’t mistake this for an act of generosity. The motive is different. The more leave employees take, the less companies have to pay towards leave encashment at the end of the year. Hit hard by the economic slowdown, any penny saved is manna for these companies, that too in a quarter that anyway has fewer billing days.

Apart from the reduced encashment payout, the leaves will mean considerable savings on operating costs, an HR manager said.

But employees are not complaining. Shahid Ahmed (name changed), employed with Bristlecone, a Mahindra company, was elated when he was told to take leave from December 26 and return only after January 4. He will now be able to attend his brother’s wedding on December 28. “We are forced to go on leave as they will not pay us if we do not use them. But I don’t mind,” he said.

A Bristlecone official confirmed that employees had been asked to take a vacation.

Corporate communications officials could not be reached as they, too, were on leave.

“We too have been asked to take a 16-day break,” said an HP employee who is spending time with her family in Kerala. An HP spokesman said 90% of the staff would be on leave for 16 days. “The holiday is extended from December 21 to January 4 subject to specific client needs,” he said. “It is an annual shutdown and helps employees to spend time with family while achieving significant environmental and operational benefits.”

Oracle India development centre has “advised” employees, particularly those working on US projects, to take off from December 29 to January 4, an employee said.  

“I have been working here for the past four years and this is the first time such a thing has been done,” said the executive, who did not want to be named. Similarly, Cisco is understood to have asked employees to go on 11 days’ leave.

A senior consultant and team leader with Infosys said he was telling colleagues to take leave instead of sitting idle. “But this has nothing to do with the slowdown,” he said, explaining that consultants are needed only at the beginning of projects and his project is already in the execution phase.

IT biggies like Infosys, Wipro, HCL, and Mindtree said there is no policy on forced vacations. “We encourage leave throughout the year,” said a Mindtree official. “We don’t resort to such measures for small benefits. It will only create a negative perception.”

Lakshmi Natarajan (name changed), working with a leading business software maker, has gone on eight days’ leave to Coorg and will return to work in the first week of January. She, too, is happy. “I agreed to take off as I wanted to help my company tide over the slowdown,” she said. All her floor managers are also on leave.

Normally, IT employees time their vacations with those of their customers. But this time it’s more than just that, said an insider. “Companies are using any reason to implement forced vacations, including using it as an HR initiative to get employees to spend more time with families. [But] it is only a tactic to prune costs,” he said.