Oyo introduces 4-day work week, no-questions-asked infinite PL; Zerodha kills work chats post-6pm

The work-from-home (WFH) module, precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic, has been a bag of mixed blessings for employers and employees alike.

Remote working comes with several side-effects, triggering mental health-related problems, ear infection due to excessive headphone usage, bad posture due to long working hours, lack of movement, among others.

According to a recent survey by Gi Group, titled 'All in the Mind: the state of mental health in Corporate India', around 77 per cent employers feel long, erratic working hours is the main reason for mental health-related problems, while 79 per cent of the employees feel the role of leadership is a major concern.



Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of OYO, took to Twitter on Wednesday to share few important initiatives to address the challenges - burnout and mental health conditions - that come in the wake of WFH. "Covid continues to test our physical and mental well-being. One thing that truly matters is having more time for our loved ones and ourselves," Agarwal said.


Starting Wednesday, Oyo will begin a four-day work week with a twist. The company will now have Wednesdays off to let employees have a mid-week breather. "We also launched a No-Questions-Asked-Flexible Infinite Paid Leave," added the entrepreneur.

In his five-part tweets, the 27-year-old CEO urged OYO staff to take an off without any reasons when they want as long as the managers are kept in the loop. "We are not going to stress about business impact and deadlines. We know work will not suffer, if anything OYOpreneurs will be more focused, efficient, and productive," he wrote.


Sharing his own plans, the hospitality boss said he plans to take an off (on account of it being a Wednesday) and spend quality time with family. He also said, on his off day, he plans to volunteer for the OYO COVID War Room, and talk to friends and colleagues whose families have been impacted severely in the last few weeks.

"I hope & pray that we all emerge out of this crisis sooner. Until then, we must all have each other’s back and tide over this crisis together," he concluded.


Last week, Zerodha also took measures to cut down on long-working hours. In an attempt to reduce the feeling of burnout, Nithin Kamath, founder and CEO of the stock broking platform, announced on Twitter that work-related conversations, call and chats will not take place post-6PM, and on holidays.

"Zerodha is also trying to get as many conversations to be asynchronous, moving them from chat to our internal instance of discourse," he said.

Referring to American seed money start-up accelerator YCombinator's post, the 41-year-old entrepreneur said that multitasking hurts performance and even damages the brain. "Being part of multiple discussions on different topics in different chat groups simultaneously (multitasking) has gone up exponentially post WFH," his post read.


Earlier this month, food delivery platform Swiggy also announced a four-day work week just for the month of May, and employees will have the flexibility to choose their off days.

A few companies in countries like the UK, Japan and Spain have tried the four-day work week.