A day off was supposed to be a day away from work. Increasingly in India, it isn’t. Many people now file casual or sick leave not to sleep in or run errands, but to carve out uninterrupted time to finish office tasks.
Call it Work-From-Leave (WFL): the quiet ritual of using paid time off to get “real” work done, uninterrupted research, deep writing, lengthy grading, or design drafts that get buried by meetings and pings during normal hours.
This behaviour isn’t mere eccentricity. It’s a symptom of overloaded calendars, blurred boundaries in hybrid setups, and a visibility culture that rewards being “always on.”
What WFL Looks Like
In practice, WFL follows a predictable pattern: you apply for leave, stay home, open the laptop, and finish an assignment or stack of tasks that the normal workday fragments. A senior graphic designer described this in a recent interview: when meetings, client pings, and mentoring duties carve the day into tiny pieces, the only way to get a three-hour creative run is to take a day off.
A Delhi schoolteacher told a similar story: heavy administrative tasks, parent messages, and substitutions consume free periods, so she uses leave to complete grade entry and reports.
Those stories show WFL is not laziness but a workaround for uninterrupted focus. Social platforms echo the pattern: users on Indian workplace subreddits post similar confessions; for example, one thread reads, “I took a sick leave just to finish writing a report because my office day is just meetings back to back.”
How Common Is The Pressure
We don’t have a single national figure that counts how many workers specifically take leave to work. But several robust indicators explain why WFL is widespread. International and national labour data show India as a long-hours country: about 51% of Indian workers report working more than 49 hours per week, placing India near the top globally for extended workweeks.
Burnout is also high. The McKinsey Health Institute survey found Indian respondents reported the highest rates of burnout symptoms, about 59%, among countries surveyed, signalling widespread exhaustion that pushes people to find private ways to finish work.
Why “Finishing Work On Leave” Isn’t Harmless
Long working hours carry clear, documented health risks. The WHO–ILO joint review concluded that working 55+ hours per week is associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease, compared with standard 35 to 40 hour weeks.
The same review estimated that hundreds of thousands of fatalities annually are linked to long working hours. WFL is a band-aid: the individual day of focused output may help meet a deadline, but repeated reliance on it sits on top of a culture that increases cardiovascular and mental health risk.
High exhaustion also erodes quality. Research and industry surveys show burnout lowers creativity, increases mistakes, and staff turnover, outcomes that paradoxically reduce long-term productivity, even if short WFL days seem to “save” a deliverable. McKinsey and public health findings treat extreme hours as an organisational and public health problem, not just a personal failing.
Why Organisations Encourage WFL
First: meeting bloat. Across sectors, workers report calendars jammed with recurring status calls and ad hoc review meetings that fragment the day; many knowledge tasks require contiguous time that the normal day doesn’t allow.
Internal audits and HR studies in knowledge industries often show employees spending a large share of their day in meetings, leaving no deep-work blocks.
Second: visibility theatre and presenteeism. Where “being online” or instantly responsive is prized, employees face a choice: visibly answer pings and be interrupted, or hide and do the work elsewhere.
Multiple workplace surveys and sector studies report high presenteeism levels; for example, hospital staff studies show about 75% reported presenteeism at least once in the last year, illustrating how common working while unwell or off the clock has become.
Third: patchy workload design and poor redistribution. Overstaffing in some layers and under-resourcing in critical roles create recurring load spikes, exam seasons, client renewals, audits that individuals swallow rather than systems correcting. The result: an employee’s quiet leave day becomes the only time to catch up.
Also Read: Work Culture Difference: What Works In Europe Can Get You Fired In India
What Experts Say
Dr K. Srinath Reddy, President of the Public Health Foundation of India, has emphasised that chronic stressors and extended working patterns affect cardiovascular and mental health at the population level, a reminder that organisational norms have public health consequences.
The McKinsey Health Institute recommends reframing employee health beyond quick “wellness” perks to systemic redesign: reduce demand, increase enabling factors, like predictable focus time, and track wellness metrics, not because it’s charitable, but because healthy employees are more productive. Their global survey flagged India’s high burnout rate, 59%, underlining the urgency.
HR practitioners working with Indian firms also suggest practical changes. Talent and HR consultants, practitioners at large consultancies, advise protected “focus hours” or no-meeting days, strict limits on after-hours messaging, formalised comp-off for extra shifts, and measuring vacation utilisation as a health indicator rather than a cost line. These steps target the precise frictions that make WFL attractive.
What Employers And Employees Can Do
For employers, what actually moves the needle:
Introduce at least one weekly no-meeting day or scheduled focus blocks so deep tasks have protected time. Case studies from firms that trialled this show clearer schedules and fewer after-hours catch-ups.
Track and limit after-hours communication. Audit email and Slack usage and set firm expectations.
Normalise compensatory leave and measure vacation utilisation and restfulness scores as KPIs. When organisations stop applauding “visibility” and measure outcomes instead, behaviour changes.
For employees:
Block and label deep-work hours on calendars. Written requests reduce the chance of meetings being set over that time.
Document extra work and take comp-off formally. If you work late for offshore calls or weekend crunches, log it and ask HR for compensatory leave.
Create artefacts from leave work. After a leave day, send a short summary email: what you completed, why you needed uninterrupted time, and whether the task could have been scheduled differently that both shows output and builds the case for systemic fixes.
Reddit threads from Indian workers show peers recommending documentation and comp-off as pragmatic steps. For example, one user wrote, “It’s okay to take the day off. Don’t wait long to take the leave… keep all in CC.”
Be sceptical about quick fixes. Token “wellness” stipends or occasional yoga sessions do not alter calendars. Unless leadership changes how performance is measured, outcomes versus visibility, and protects focus time, WFL will persist as a survival tactic.
Work-From-Leave is not an entertaining anecdote; it’s a red flag. It signals that the system has trained employees to step outside formal hours in order to function during formal hours.
The data are stark: around 51% of Indian workers put in 49+ hours per week, approximately 59% of surveyed Indian respondents report burnout symptoms, presenteeism is commonly reported in workplace studies, and long working hours have concrete cardiovascular risks.
If employers want the short-term gains of an employee finishing a report on leave, they can keep tolerating the dysfunction. If they want sustainable productivity, they must redesign work, block time for deep work, stop measuring visibility, compensate overtime formally, and measure rest as a business metric.
Otherwise, WFL will continue, and individual “solutions” will keep masking a system that exacts a real toll on health, creativity, and lives.
Images: Google Images
Sources: WION, The Economic Times, Firstpost
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: work culture India, overwork culture, Indian workplaces, burnout at work, work from leave, toxic work culture, corporate India, employee burnout, workplace stress, mental health at work, long working hours, productivity myths, hustle culture India, work life balance India, corporate burnout, meeting culture, hybrid work stress, workplace mental health, employee well being, labour rights India, modern work culture
Disclaimer: We do not hold any right, copyright over any of the images used, these have been taken from Google. In case of credits or removal, the owner may kindly mail us.
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