Not more but more meaningful holidays

Whether we are in school or college or office, holiday is always fun. Particularly holidays with no home work and holidays with pay are double whammy.  But, these days turn sour only when you are forced to sit for a holiday, when you have neither reason to celebrate nor enough things to do. Such forced holidays are always a moot point in organizations and Government offices, some of which follow still the archaic policies framed under different environment, most of which are no longer valid.

Of late, with the increase in the pay packets and corresponding expectations, there has been an indirectly proportional decrease in the public holidays observed by some private organizations. It ranges anywhere from 4 to 8 days a year and out of these 3 are for the national holidays and that leaves one with a handful of days for other functions. In India , with its myriad cultures, religion, belief , sentiments and emotion this is at the other end of expectations and there is every reason for an employee to be peeved at this mindless holiday list.  While a person may not have any activity related to a common holiday as he does not belong to that faith, he will be forced to consider going on ‘unscheduled medical leave’ for a day which is important to his religion, but is not considered as ‘common’ enough to mandate a holiday.

For instance, I always feel bored to sit at home on a Bakrid or Christmas, while I would very much like to have a day off for Bhogi or Kanu. Equally others will also have opinions as per their belief.

Government organizations on the other hand declare holidays in excess of requirements regardless of productivity- an instance in evidence is of a 13 day holiday in Jan for T.N Govt.

While we are becoming progressive in many other aspects, it is time all organizations consider basic common holidays such as Independence day, Republic day and Gandhi Jayanthi and offer a bouquet of holidays spanning across all religions and faith and give the option to the employees to choose a certain maximum number of holidays from them. By this, the employee will have a reasonable list to choose his day off so that people will be available when others are exercising their options. By this productivity, customer satisfaction and more importantly the employee satisfaction are bound to skyrocket.

I am not sure why many organizations are still dragging their feet to introduce this productive measure, in the absence of which employees simply abstain themselves impacting all expectations. Shall we take this up and almost ensure a 365 days service to the customers so that the revenue stream will also never gasp?

Will the self-proclaimed forward looking, employee friendly and customer-oriented organizations wake up?