I end up working all 6 days of the week for more than 10 hours. In corporate life this seems to be a normal statement. We are all just ready to bend over backwards to help our Companies earn profit and prosper, sometimes at the cost of our health, many a times at the cost of our family life.
In India, Over Working is often confused with Working Hard. Many a times, we think that only if a person works for a longer duration of time, then the person is a hard working person, who will succeed in life. Yes, we are over burdened, wherein the scope of work of an employee is not described clearly by the employer. We think that it is just because a person is your sub-ordinate the person below your designation should do every work, this stress keeps on piling up.
Fault of the Employers
Over-working or working beyond official hours is sometimes the fault of both, the employers as well as the employees. Wherein the Employer’s often look at how much they can extract from the Employees, to justify the salary that they are paying to the Employee. It is the worst in smaller organisations, where one Employee is sometimes, expected to take care of multiple roles. This may be a good learning experience for sometime but later on the same leads to unwarranted stress and ultimately hampers the health of the Employee. Seldom does it matter to any employer, whether the health or family life of his Employee is at stake.
There is no clear seperation of the duties and deliverables of the employee. Secondly, most of the times, due to tough competition, our Corporates and managers are desperate for new assignments and tend to accept the same even with shorter deadlines. If the employers are a bit more considerate and willing to adjust, probably we can deliver better quality assignments in decent time frame. If every organisation calculates a reasonable time frame before committing delivery to the client, in that case a lot of stress is reduced on the employees.
Lack of education
There is also fault in our education system and therefore a lot of new employees are not trained for the job they want. There is sheer lack of practical experience given to our students during their college years. Apart from that our students are not well prepared in good communication skills, which also hampers their confidence in the initial years in work life. It takes them some time to learn the required skill set and therefore some of them resort to bitching, buttering their seniors for their survival. Thus, we are barely able to get good capable employees.
Employee’s fault
It is not only the Employer’s fault but also the employee’s fault to certain extend. The number of people that I have come across, who keep on wasting hours of official working hours and then start working at the end of the day. There are N number of employees, who need their mandatory coffee breaks and cigaratte breaks apart from the washroom breaks every hour, otherwise, they cannot concentrate. The commute in metro cities in tough and that only adds to the employees often reaching late to their work place. The N number of long phone calls and gossip over whatsapp groups are only contributors to wasting of time.
Thus, partially it is the fault of the Employers and also on the part of the Employees, that we believe Over Working or unstructured working is Glamourous. Just because you are working hard for longer hours does not mean that it is something glamourous. Sometimes, working long hours also is a reflection of inefficiency of the system.
It is good to be a perfectionist. It is good to achieve your deadlines. But at the same time, it is important to maintain your family life and personal life otherwise, the same will result in increased cases of Divorce and Suicide. The reason why mental health issues are increasing in our society is because we have just fallen off the balance between work and time for ourselves. So before, it is too late, take control of your life and provide a good life for yourself and your family members.
The year 2020 was a disaster and challenging for all of us, in one or other way. It is high time that we all take control of our lives, before it is too late. Work From Home was a new concept for us and just because a lot of us saved a lot of time during travelling we ended up working for more hours. Partly it was because a lot of face to face meetings were converted into phone calls and partly because we were also overwhelmed due to the new change in our working environment. The laptop, Cell Phone and the Internet Connection ensures that we are never away from work technically.
Erratic Working hours may seem cool and glamourous but it does give rise to a lot of lifestyle diseases in future.
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
If you are interested in participating in the same, do let me know.
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