Almost every working professional dreams of finishing up work early to catch up with friends, family or do something for oneself. Tata Teleservices (TTS),  a telecommunications company ran campaign last week to get people to encourage more people to leave office early. June 24 was chosen as the day to observe the initiative.

"Many a time, we have heard from employees the good times they spent with friends and family when they left the workplace early, and how these activities actually led to them being better and happier professionals in the longer run-that’s one of the triggers of the Leave Office Early campaign," said Sanjeev Khera, Mr Sanjeev Khera, Regional Hub Head (South India) and Chief Operating Officer, CDMA Operations, Karnataka Circle, Tata Teleservices Limited, in the press release.

As part of the campaign, TTS organised a free live concert of popular singer Neeraj Sridhar of Bombay Vikings fame at 6pm in Palace Grounds. In addition, after registering on the website, a host of discounts coupons for food, clothing and electronic gadget were offered to members, with the caveat that offers can be availed only between 4 pm and 8 pm on June 24.

TTS ran the campaign to promote its Tata Photon wireless broadband service. A number of Photon branded leave-office-early hoardings were running around Bangalore as a run up to June 24.

While the campaign did gain buzz due to extensive publicity in the media, schedules of many remained unchanged. Swetha Setty, 25, a software professional, was in no hurry to leave office early on Friday. "Meetings are not scheduled keeping in mind these campaigns," she told Citizen Matters.

Udaibir Singh, 27, a manager at a digital marketing company, too gave a  miss to leaving office early. He says that his work has fairly flexible work timings and that he would rather come to office late. "Have you seen the traffic in Bangalore in the evening?" he quips. With two projects going live soon, Singh has his hands full so he was not be able to leave early anyway. "I think it is a very good initiative. People get stuck at work and unless they make a conscious effort, they continue with things as they are," he says.

Singh says," Being Bangalore, everything seems aimed at IT professionals. BPO and other shift workers don’t have a choice to leave early." Harshal Kumar, 24, a mechanical engineer too feels the campaign is aimed at largely at IT professionals. "Most people working in sectors other than IT have 9 to 5 timings which is fairly decent timing, so they leave office early any way," he says. He adds that TTS played safe by setting the campaign on June 24, a Friday, as most people finish office early anyway for the weekend," he says.

D Pragathi, 24, software professional in a well-known IT company said that many in her office, including her had planned to leave early on Friday. "The campaign is quite popular among my friends. We want to leave early and possibly attend the concert or just hang out," she says.

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