As an aftermath of recession, employees are asked to work late by companies like Infosys to increase productivity, but those extra hours will be more harmful than good. "More hours does not do much to increase the productivity as the efficiency of the employee decreases as time prolongs," said Diana Joseph, Director, Fourth Wave.



An employee could also lose on his/her overall productivity by working late. So, more preference is given to the efficiency and the output of the work done than how long it took or how long the employee worked. Most companies follow the tried and tested module of an employee working an average of 8-9 hours a day.



The work productivity may increase depending on whether the employees are really working on business sites or surfing non-business sites. Websense, in its recent survey had pointed out that productivity loss per employee was 5.3 hours per week in surfing non-business websites. In this case, it also adds up to the administrative costs.



Sadhana Somasekhar, Joint Managing Director, Focus Infotech said, "Productivity might or might not increase depending on two criteria- if employee is self-motivated to finish a work and work late, there's positive change in productivity sees and if the employee is working late due to the work pressure or under compulsion, then the productivity is deemed to see negative influence in the long dash."