Indian companies want their employees to vote — and they’re pushing incentives

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Indian companies want their employees to vote — and they’re pushing incentives

  • Samsung and Jubilant FoodWorks are providing a day off to all those people who are planning to travel and vote.
  • Flipkart has reportedly set up voter registration camps for its employees and their families.
  • Swiggy’s #VoteKaroPhirSwiggyKaro campaign urged its delivery people to pledge to vote.
Celebrities, politicians and activists are not the only ones who are asking people to turn up to polling booths on voting day. Companies across India are pushing campaigns in order to push their employees to go out and vote even if that means taking a day off.
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Flipkart, Samsung and Swiggy are among companies incentivising staff to go out and vote.

Swiggy’s #VoteKaroPhirSwiggyKaro campaign urged its delivery people to pledge to vote. The Bombay Stock Exchange has also launched a social media campaign.

Walmart-owned-Flipkart has reportedly set up voter registration camps for its employees and their families. The camps not only register first time voters but also help in shifting the registration to a different constituency. Migration is one of the primary reasons for voter turnup as the urban migrants can vote only in the constituency they are registered in.

Several companies are providing a day off to their employees to turn up to vote on election day, including Samsung, Jubilant FoodWork, Mahindra & Mahindra, Infosys, Deloitte, Accenture, H&M and Titan.

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The effort comes amid India’s general elections that kicked off on 11 April and will last till 12 May.

Unlike Canada that allows all eligible voters to have three hours off from work to exercise their right to vote on election day, India does not have laws mandating time off for workers to vote.

Even though the average election turnout in India over all nine phases for the 2014 general election stood around 66.40%-- the highest till now-- most of the voters find it difficult to go to the polling stations and vote because of work commitments.
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