Most companies look to extract as much work as possible from their employees, including working on weekends and beyond office hours, but one company seems to be resolutely going in the opposite direction.
E-commerce platform Meesho has given its employees a paid 9-day break. The break will run from 26th October to 3rd November. The company says that this break will allow employees to “reset and recharge.”
“No laptops, Slack messages, emails, meetings, or stand-up calls, nothing work-related for 9 days!” the company posted on Linkedin. “We’re heading into our 4th consecutive company-wide “Reset and Recharge” break from October 26th to November 3rd. After the efforts put into this year and our successful Mega Blockbuster Sale, it’s time to fully unplug and focus on ourselves. This break is for us to recharge our minds and bodies for a fresh and energized start to the year ahead!” it added.
Meesho has experimented with such employee-friendly policies in the past as well. In February 2022, it had introduced a work-from-anywhere policy, which allowed all its then-1,700 employees to work from home, office or any location of their choosing. But less than a year later, Meesho had scrapped the policy, and instead adopted a flexi-work model, which required employees to come to office once a week. “The majority of our employees expressed the need for more in-person connects to foster collaboration, live our culture of speedy execution, and form informal bonds,” Meesho has said on doing away with its work-from-anywhere policy.
But this is the fourth year that Meesho is giving employees the long break, so it appears that this particular experiment seems to be working, and could be continued into the future. In the west, companies give a similar time-off around Christmas and New Year, during which employees rarely attend office, and very little work gets done. Meesho seems to have given a similar leave around Diwali, which not only makes more sense in the Indian context, but can provide a similar period for employees to refresh and recharge. It remains to be seen if this idea picks up in other Indian companies, but a long break around Diwali is something most Indian employees would be happy to get behind.