Shreya Gupta (name changed) reports to office at 9am, completes her day’s work, gives her juniors instructions and leaves for the day, hardly spending five hours at the office. Shantanu Maitra (name changed) swipes his card at 9am, spends time drinking tea, chatting with his colleagues, walks out of office at 9pm, well past the eight hours he is required to work.

Maitra suffers from the “culture of hours” syndrome. It is the belief that one has to work long hours to succeed. An office that has succumbed to this always makes an employee, who doesn’t want to stay back unnecessarily, feel extremely guilty. Human resource experts are worried. It is being diagnosed everywhere in the city.

“In a company where commitment to work is not measured in terms of output but in terms of the hours spent at the office, leaving before the requisite hours is seen as a lack of commitment. It affects employees’ appraisals and promotions,” says Leena Chatterjee, professor, behavioural sciences, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. It is branded as a left-over from the old economy, but it is infecting the new economy offices at an alarming speed.

Employees have to know how to look busy. One can keep looking at the computer screen intently, even if she is only cracking a crossword. “In the beginning when I finished my work early, I used to move around the place talking to people. But I was asked to look busy even if I wasn’t. ‘Sit at the computer, stare at the screen, start writing your journal but pretend to work,’ I was told,” says a former NGO worker.

There are ways of doing the disappearing act. “Suppose one has a commitment at six in the evening for an hour, but is not expected to leave office before eight. Employees usually quietly slip out hoping not to be noticed and come back and sit at the computer, pretending they were always there,” she says.

It helps to be a smoker. “If smokers go for a break, it is okay. But non-smokers like me have a tough time explaining to our seniors why we leave our desks. ‘You don’t smoke. So where do you go?’ is a question I face a lot,” says Arijit Sen (name changed), a 28-year-old employee at an IT company in Sector V.

The hour requirement is doubly damaging. Long days require long explanations. “We have to justify a daily average of nine hours of work every week, even if I have achieved my deliverables in half that time,” says Shamik Javed (name changed), an employee of one the top five IT companies in India.

Women workers, reputed to want to go home earlier, are not the only affected. For a lot of men with working wives obliged to return home soon now, having to stay back to meet the “hour-requirement” is a problem.

The hour game is not limited to a sector or company. “If you are lucky to have a boss who does not believe you have to hang around in office after your job is done, you can even leave before the requisite hours,” says Sen. But if unlucky, an employee may just end up with a boss who sends a memo with the words “left office without permission”, even if you fall ill and are taken to the hospital.

There is some hope. Some companies see staying beyond working hours as the shortcoming of the employee to get the job done, rather than as commitment towards the organisation. “There is an increasing trend of people being encouraged to work from home. But it is limited to people ‘with invitation’ only,” says Javed.

And progressive policies don’t always work. The management ushers them in, but does not often encourage them. So the alternative is to keep a half-empty cup of coffee always on your desk or your office door permanently open. Till the new economy wakes up to really new ways and knows the right answer to the question: What matters more: the number of hours spent at the office or the number of targets met?