The Indian tech company SoftGrid mandates staff departure times.

The colorful alert that flashed across Tanvi Khandelwal's work computer's screen recently startled the 21-year-old.

"Your shift is now complete. In ten minutes, the office computer system will shut down. I BEG YOU, LEAVE! "It read.

Ms. Khandelwal, who had only recently joined the company's human resources department, soon discovered that the pop-up message had been put in place by her new employers to force her to log off on time.

She is one of 40 employees at SoftGrid Computers, an Indian computer start-up headquartered in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. She receives daily notifications to log off 10 minutes before their shift finishes. Their computers turned off at 7 o'clock.

According to SoftGrid's CEO and co-founder Shweta Shukla, the notification was a part of the organization's initiatives to support workers in striking a better work-life balance.

"We all started working extra hours due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I was having trouble finding time for my kid, "says her.

Her coworkers at the company were dealing with similar difficulties.

So they requested software from a colleague that would first flash a warning on the screen before shutting down the computer ten minutes later.

About six months ago, the program was installed on all employee computers.

"We planned it to be a surprise, so we did it over the weekend. Several workers initially believed the pop-up to be a joke or that their computers had been hijacked when it came across their screens. "Invoking Ms. Shukla.

She claims the pop-up method was her preference because it was more entertaining than a "boring memo or email."

According to the staff, the message is a helpful reminder to leave the office and go home.

According to Ms. Khandelwal, this is significantly dissimilar from her previous employers, where it was discouraged to leave early, and the staff was urged to put in extra time.

About a week ago, she made a post on LinkedIn about the pop-up effort, claiming that if one worked in a culture like that, they didn't need Monday Motivation or Fun Friday to make them feel better.

With over 400,000 likes and 7,000 comments, the article quickly gained traction.

Although many users have appreciated the project, some have also questioned its usefulness.

One user stated, "This will pressure us to accomplish deadlines early." The "inflexible working attitude," according to one commenter, may drive people to work on the weekends. Others questioned what would occur if unfinished work remained and an employee needed help logging off.

Ms. Shukla explains, "They only need to restart the system and log in."

She says the message isn't binding and is merely meant to remind her teammates that the workday is over and they're free to leave.

"Some of our clients are unhappy about this, but we're standing by it," she adds.