Recently I read a news article that the official working hours in the Indian Information technology (IT) services companies have been increased by more than an hour from present 8 hours to more than 9 hours. It is also stated that some companies have gone the extra mile and increased it to nine and half hours and the article says that this is all due to the current economic downturn. And companies are squeezing the employee more by monitoring the amount of time spent for a lunch break, coffee breaks and smoking. It is well said that “Desperate times call for desperate measures”.
Globally almost every company is affected due to this and are looking out for ways to cut the costs and increase the revenues. The reason for increasing the number of working hours is by increasing that number by at least one hour per day, the companies gain extra 20-22 hours per month on a single employee for the same cost of the employee (read salary here). This increases the number of man-hours and decreases the number of employees needed to complete the same task for the company. From the employee’s point of view, it is very bad. If we consider a typical working day of a software company employee in India, it takes about 1-1.5 hours to reach the office and the same amount of time to reach home in the evening from the office, and after considering the work time, he will be left with only 12 hours. Out of it, if we consider 8 hours for sleep, he will be left with only 4 hours to spend at home or with family. This is not desirable as this will affect negatively the productivity of the employee in the long term making him stressed out. It is common to see the remote employee monitoring software working long hours in almost all Indian software companies. They spend more time at work than with their families. Rather than focusing on short term gains, companies should focus on long term advantages because the dissatisfied and stressed out employees lose interest in the work and thus not willing to cooperate. This will lead to decreased productivity.
It is a general notion that making the employee work more hours increases productivity but it has no evidence and is nowhere proved either scientifically or by any other method and in my opinion, the productivity of an employee does not depend on how many hours he works but how much he/she enjoys his/her work. Maintaining a work-life balance is extremely important for both the employer and employee as this will help boost productivity and thus helpful in the long term. Many companies boast about the ‘fun at work’ in their companies but most of the time the opposite thing reflects in their employees.
Instead of making the employees work for more hours by rule, companies should lookout for ways to keep their employees happy so that they enjoy their work and willing to work more voluntarily and thus is more productive.
Also making the employees work creatively helps to boost productivity. This is possible by providing the right training and education to the employees in which they are interested.
Northwestern 