How are your Working Hours Treating You?

On an average, how many hours do you work a day?

Once, Jack Ma, the Chinese e-commerce tycoon, faced an angry backlash for his ‘996’ prescription. Translated, it means, the employee starts the commute at 8 a.m. to reach office at 9 a.m. and then leave office at 9 p.m. (for six days in a row). Excellent hard-core work recipe for start-ups and strivers to make it big through huge sacrifices. Rules of office work don’t apply to them and they don’t have HR folks breathing down their necks

Gauging the sentiment from the backlash, it is clear that employees, all over the world are less willing to work long hours. They want to enjoy their leisure time for a balanced meaningful existence. 

Later responding to criticism, Jack Ma rectified that his 996 prescription also included time for study, reflection and self-improvement.

Pixabay

Facts

A work week in USA is maximum 40 hours since 1940. Europeans work an equal or lesser number of working hours (e.g. Netherlands: 29 hours, France: 35 hours, Belgium: 40 hours). Countries with one weekly off include Djibouti, Iran, Palestine, Somalia, Nepal. 

India has a poorly enforced law on maximum 48 hours work week. The forever plea for regressive nations is the poorly behaving economy. Overtime dues and extended hours are simply overlooked.

Kronos Incorporated, US-based multi-national workforce management firm, reported in 2018 that India is “so tired and so overworked”. 

Expedia 'Vacation Deprivation report 2016' analysed data and ranked India as the “4th most vacation deprived country globally”.

International Labour Organization (ILO) currently defines a workweek exceeding 48 hours as excessive.

Health Hazard

If the economy of a nation is doing bad, the employer gets panicky and asks the employee to put in 50 hours of work every week. To please the boss, out of job loss fear, the employee goes further and puts in 60 or more hours (also attending office work at home). Together, they are colluding to discredit the studies that 40 hours a week is enough for optimum productivity. 

Every hour over this makes the employee counter-productive. Short term symptoms from extended workdays include sleepiness, fatigue, poor concentration, irritability and increased susceptibility to illness. Long term symptoms include muscular-skeletal damage, obesity, brain & nerve damage and heart attack.

Most recently, economists in developed countries are blaming long working hours as a common precursor for the problems of unemployment, environmental degradation, low well-being, poor family care, and neglected social life. 

Bottom Line

Modern day employers can take a leaf out of Henry Ford’s pioneering resolution in 1926 when Ford Motor Company changed the work policy to 40-hour weeks with five working days, without reducing wages. 

Employers disservice their nation by robbing their employees of leisure hours. Working 52 to 60 hours a week not only causes physical and mental deterioration, but can cause irretrievable damage to relationships, friendships and eventually to life.

Lucky you, if your employer understands work-life balance! 

Relationships with family, friends or other people in the community are vital for mental health and wellbeing. Recreation helps. And to do this, quantity time is as important as quality time.

LEISURE by W. H. Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

….……………………………………

….……………………………………

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

….……………………………………

….……………………………………

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.