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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 extra mile and increased it to nine and half hours and the article says that this is all due to current economic downturn. And companies are squeezing the employee more by monitoring the amount of time spent for 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 the 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 gains extra 20-22 hours per month on a single employee for the same cost of the employee (read salary here). This not only increases the number of man hours but also 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 office and same amount of time to reach home in the evening from office, and after considering the work time, he will be left with only 12 hours. Out of it, if we consider 8 hours for the sleep, he will be left with only 4 hours to spend at home or with family. This is not desirable as this will effect negatively on the productivity of the employee in the long term making him stressed out.

It is common to see the employees working long hours in almost all Indian software companies. They spend more time at work than with their families. Rather than focussing 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 the 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 the productivity and thus helpful in the long term. Many companies boast about the ‘fun at work’ in their companies but most of the times the opposite thing reflects in their employees.

Instead of making the employees to work for more hours by rule, companies should look out for the 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 to work creatively helps to boost the productivity. This is possible by providing the right training and education to the employees in which they are interested in.

Do you think the way the companies are reacting to the economic slowdown is right? Let me know your thoughts.