Do 'Flexi Hours' Offer A Way Out Of Traffic Snarls?

With their staff struggling to get to work, some organisations are looking at the option

- Liffy Thomas 

Last month, the government employees at Vidhana Soudha, the state legislature of Karnataka, sought that their reporting time be pushed by 30 minutes.

Of the 2,500 employees, nearly one-third were found to be clocking in late at work, and the reason was largely Bengaluru’s gridlock of a traffic.

The Secretariat Employees’ Association claimed that employees were under severe stress to reach their office on time as punching late would mean the biometric attendance would log them as absent.

They wanted the current relaxation of 10 minutes to be extended by an additional 20 minutes, which means the reporting time would be from 10 a.m. to 10.30 a.m.

Traffic snarls and rushhour chaos are not unique to Bengaluru; most other metros grapple with this problem. Staggered work hours and flexi timings are being tried out, but not across industries.

Recently, the Odisha government rescheduled its working hours.

Simple changes

In Mumbai, a campaign, ‘WorkToLiveToWork’, launched in January 2018 urges companies to implement staggered office timings.