Khaitan & Co has cut down its working week to Monday to Friday, while increasing the daily working hours by one hour from 1 March.

For the last two years the firm had a policy where every second and fourth Saturday of the month were normal working days, following variations of this policy that evolved over the years, explained Khaitan Mumbai partner Rabindra Jhunjhunwala.

Jhunjhunwala commented: “The Saturday was there because we were doing a lot of non-billable stuff. So we decided that we’ll just spend an extra hour during the week. It won’t really affect [billings and non-billable initiatives] and anyway the Khaitan policy hasn’t been to kill everybody to make money.

“Work-life balance is foremost. It also integrates well with our philosophy of starting your day early and ending it at a reasonable time to have interests outside work.”

He said that when Khaitan’s Mumbai office was started, every Saturday was a half-working-day but this was changed to a full working day every alternate Saturday, after the management realised that the long commutes in Mumbai meant that half-days were almost like regular working days.

Eight years ago the firm synced its work week with government offices where the first and third Saturdays are usually working days, he said, adding that at Khaitan the fifth Saturday was also a working day. Two years ago this was cut down to two Saturdays, and now, from 1 March onwards, every Saturday will be a non-working day at firm.

“We were just reviewing the whole plan and wanted to make sure people were more efficient working five days, may be with slightly longer hours. We are seeing more and more of our [Indian] clients forming a five-day work week and somewhere our HR process [suggested that] people are refreshed, recharged when they come back on a Monday [and we are] not wasting energy and resource on Saturdays,” said Jhunjhunwala.