Bangalore: Startups are crazy places to work in, the entrepreneurs don’t care about the day and night, they shun their family life, so that they can focus on the business, and thus they expect the same from their employees. But all work and no play surely makes Jack a dull boy. Thus, many times startups have to force their employees to plug out from their busy work schedules and take a break.

“We have a committee among the employees, who arrange for a combined lunch day, sponsored by the company. The committee selects the hotel, decides the menu and all the employees go out for a late lunch, generally on a Friday. This helps the people, especially the new joinees to catch up with each other as anyone can go and meet the other,” says Radhakrishnan RAV, COO, Asia Region, AVAcorp. The company also allows flexible timings to its employees, with just the basic eight hours clocked in. It is also casual, when it comes to the dress code.

Many companies block the social networking sites as they feel that it would reduce the productivity of the employees. But Radhakrishnan is of a different opinion, as the company allows the employees to post on their own micro-blogging sites.

Since a startup is a close knit team of a handful of employees, it is obvious that they would treat each other as family. Kamanashish Roy, Co-Founder, Debate.fm says, “We are a small team, and hence believe in treating the employees as family members. All of us go to the concerned person’s home to celebrate the birthday parties. We are also not fixed about the work timings and I have never forced any of my co-workers to come or leave office. I have few people who play games online for hours together, but that never bothered me as I would prefer them to get back to work fully refreshed and do a great job, rather than being forced to work and getting a sloppy result.”

Giving employees the required freedom would increase the magnitude of trust on each other. Maintaining an informal work environment, not only helps boost creativity, but also makes the work place fun. Robin Mosses, CEO, Reach Accountant says, “We give the employees the freedom to choose their work timings. They can even bring in their own devices, but we do take security measures. Also, its only the sales team who has to regularly go and meet new clients who have to be in formals, else we have never stopped our people from being in casuals.”

Thus, given the amount of efforts the startup employees have to put in, it is a fair enough for the entrepreneurs to make sure that the employees take time out for themselves also. “The reason I don’t force my people to stick to stringent working hours is because I have both mediocre performers, as well as rockstars. When it comes to the mediocre performers, I might be hesitant when they ask for leaves, but when it comes to rockstarts, I would not mind, as they would perform the work 15 mediocre performs  would do in 15 days in just a single day,” says Roy.

 It is only when the employees are taken care of that they would enjoy the work. Arranging for parties, having celebrations inside the office, going out for trips is just another way to ensure the relation among the employees becomes stronger and helps the people to rejuvenate. “When I used to work with Virtusa, we used to have an informal reporting system which used to run parallel with the formal reporting system. This would help the company to know what the employees really think and what their concerns are. They used to arrange an outing every quarter and a weekly break, where all the employees used to go out for tea or coffee together for half an hour,” says Radhakrishnan.

Thus, having scheduled breaks, going out for inofficial parties, having celebrations in the office, giving ample freedom to the employees helps remove the stress from the employees and enable them to plug out.