Late sitting in office – Is it worth?

Now days, there is a new trend in the market. Staying late in the office i.e. employees remain in the office after duty hours. But is it worth? Most of the time, it is not. A recent survey done by an US marketing agency gives a picture that 80% of employees staying late in the office are doing nothing after office hours. In other words, they can complete their activities on time, if they have the ability of better time management.

Its 6:00 PM। You started leaving for the day. You packed the bag and just starting for the same. In the meantime, you saw one of your colleagues sitting comfortably in the chair. He is not in a mood to go home. And on top of it, you know that he had no work at all. He is doing nothing but only time pass. These kind of professionals termed as “Late seaters”.

I have seen in some organizations that people starts playing games (Badminton, Table Tennis etc) after office hours। And finally they have the total working hours of 70 in a week. In fact once one of my colleague managers shared with me that one of his employee is actually sitting in the seat for 20 hours maximum but his report says that he is in the office for 80 hours a week.

Recently, Infosys chairman, Narayan Murthy said in a conference about late seating. He said that those professionals who have the habit of staying late in the office are wasting the resources of the office. And above all, they are wasting their time also. Actually these guys are not more productive. He also said that there are some professionals who have more work and that is the reason they are staying late in the office. That is why; people are mostly confused between sitting late and working late.

Each organization wants more productive and eligible resources for themselves। The only criteria of measuring the eligibility of an employee are based on work done on time. That is why if an employee is staying late in the office, it is not a good performance at all. The main fact is that whether an employee is staying late in the office because of time pass or work pressure, it depends on the employee itself. On the other hand, if an employee is habitual of sitting late in the office, he/she will not be able to spend the time with the family that redirects him/her to tension and family disputes.

Is it really necessary to stay late? If late sitting employees are doing great in the office, then the reason for that can be understood। But this is not true in most of the cases. It has been seen that most of the employees stay late in the office to impress the employee. Actually, this all depends on the behaviour of the employee. One cannot measure the performance of an employee based on the late sitting habit. It has been seen that few employees have more responsibilities over them, and that is the primary reason of staying late in the office for them.

In my opinion, staying late in the office is not a good culture of any organization। Employees are like back bone of any organization. Late sitting affects the performance of any employee and creates a gap between the team members. So one should not promote the late sitting culture in the organization.

-- Sanat Sharma