- Most of the office-going employees would nod in agreement that the very definition of working hours used to be predefined timings. The conventional office working hours are eight hours starting from 9 am or 10 am up to 5 pm or 6 pm depending upon the organisation’s requirements. The minimum working hours prescribed for any organization is usually eight hours. Of course, the blue-collar employees work in shifts like in the manufacturing industry for eight hours as per the industry standards. Any overtime work expected from the employees is suitably compensated for by paying for the extra hours worked though. This is a well-accepted norm that has stood the test of time despite the labour unions demanding more wages and overtime allowances.
PC: Time Doctor
- The periodic conflict between employers and employees from time to time tends to create disharmony in the organistation but the resilient and sensitive handling by the HR tends to diffuse the situation from going out of hand. Then came the once-in-a-century pandemic in the form of Covid-19 and its various variants that forced the global community to adopt the work-from-home option riding piggyback on the digitalization efforts that have progressed revolutionarily over the last four years. The advent of information-technology-driven services around the world has completely altered the way we view work execution of late. So much so that we have become so heavily involved and dependent on IT-enabled services for anything and everything.
- Right from the government departments disbursing various services to serve citizens based on socio-economic measures to the everyday banking transactions to availing mundane services vis-à-vis supplies/provisions/food etc. to entertainment, the digital presence has become ubiquitous and omnipresent. Such has been the impact of the internet worked world that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to disconnect. Remember how we spent working hours in the office and personal hours away from it? This binary life feels like ancient history because that’s how transformative the smartphone and then the pandemic have been. Thanks to these two, the worksite has been emancipated, to go where you will.
PC: Money Control
- You, in turn, have gotten shackled to it 24×7. Hence the growing, worldwide cry for the right to disconnect, to ignore work calls, messages, and emails outside of working hours. As reported, Australia has become the latest country to enshrine it in law. France was the first. Japan, at the other extreme, has a word for death from overwork. Everyone clocking out at 40 hours a week and taking all the vacation to which they are entitled, is unimaginable there. More generally, common sense says it should depend on the job. Someone who works at the intersection of multiple time zones can’t deliver their KRAs doing 9 to 5. Bottomline, workers are not slaves. We must work to live. But strike a healthy work-life balance to stay in a better frame of mind.
