Year-end break? It's work time for 71% Indians!

The upcoming festive season will be work-time for an average of seven in every ten employees in India, but a vast majority of them still expect the level of productivity to remain low during this period, says a survey.

As per a latest survey conducted by workplace solutions provider Regus, as many as 71 per cent of workers will do their office work during the year-end holiday season, comprising Christmas and New Year festivities.

Still, the level of productivity is expected to remain low, resulting into little value to their employers and thus wasting the employees' home and family time, the survey found.

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Globally, more than half of the survey respondents said they will be working during the year-end holiday season.

The survey was conducted among over 12,000 people across 85 countries.

"The holiday season is a special time for people to devote to their families and friends without neglecting their work duties," Regus regional vice president (South Asia), Madhusudan Thakur, said.

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"However our research suggests many people are not taking full advantage of the break, and, if they are also travelling into the office to work, are unnecessarily squandering precious time with their loved ones," he added.

In India, 59 per cent of respondents working during this break will travel to their offices, but 41 per cent of these people said that their productivity levels are expected to be low.

The trend of working during the festival season would be more visible in small firms in India, where 71 per cent respondents are likely to work over the break, as against 56 per cent in large businesses.

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The survey found that half of Indian business people think that staff working over the holidays mostly tend to use this time to catch up on unfinished tasks.

"With the holiday season approaching, businesses are ever more focused on how to achieve or improve the work/life balance they offer so that workers can spend time with their loved ones," Thakur said.

"Particularly, workers making the effort to travel in to work with limited transport options and in some cases adverse weather conditions could benefit from using a work location closer to home, reducing time wasted in commuting and maximising the time they can spend with their families during the break," Thakur added.