Work Balance

1. Employers helping staff to balance work and
personal life
BANGALORE: Every Wednesday and Thursday, the Intel office in Bangalore sees an unusual
visitor.
A vegetable vendor strolls in with his cart of wares specifically asked for by the Intel employees
in order to escape persecution from their spouses for not fulfilling homely chores.
Employees send their requests via email to a central desk which, in turn, passes them to the
vendor. The vegetables are packed and can be collected by the employee anytime before leaving
for the day.
“It saves me from any trouble on the home front,” exclaimed Praveen Vishakantaiah, president,
Intel India.
Intel belongs to the growing tribe of companies that are lending a hand to ease out the
inconveniences of daily chores for their employees.
Employees may bring their children to office

2. Those that cannot bring in new policies are bending
the rules for the sake of their employees even if it is
for just one day.
MphasiS is one such firm. The all-India strike on
July 5 saw many companies shutting shop and
declaring the next Saturday as a working day to
compensate for the day lost.
“Realising that working parents would be at their
wit’s end as to where to keep their children on a
weekend, MphasiS allowed employees to bring
along their children to office as long as they could
look after their security,” said Elango R, HR head
for the firm.
While employees indeed benefit from such moves, it is ensured that they do not come late to
work or leave early consistently, citing domestic reasons. For the companies, it means more staff
time at the workplace. Examples abound of this trend.
Online tutorials for employees' children
At Intel, there are online tutorials in Maths, English and
Science for employees’ children. Employees are given a
password and can refer to the tutorial any time of the day
for help.
At Google, the employees’ routes are arranged such that
they can drop their children off to play schools arranged
by the company and pick them up too.
Jayashri Ramamurti, head of people operations,
engineering and product, Google India, said, “Even if the
employee gets delayed due to work, the company informs
the play school about the delay so that the child is looked
after beyond the regular hours.”
Some firms are even sending their employees for sessions
to perfect the juggle between work and life beyond work
Programmes to help staff overcome stress

3. One such place in Asia Plateau in Panchgani, where
employees, along with their spouses, go through
programmes that help them overcome stress at work
and in their personal lives.
Darshan MVD, co-ordinator for industrial
programmes and promotions at Asia Plateau, said,
“Companies that send their employees for effective
living and leadership programmes include Tata
Motors, Kirloskar Group, Grasim Industries, Aditya
Birla Group and SKF, among others.”
Companies, too, do not seem to mind the Rs 8000-
per candidate that Asia Plateau charges for the
programmes. Getting the right balance surely does not come easy.