As a CEO of a company with a large workforce and sizeable section of executive’s pool, I have my sins to confess regarding the extended working hours culture. As a father of two young professional girls, having seen them cope with work pressure, I can see their hardships and reflections of that in my own company. I can confidently say that the Corporate world needs to rethink its approach towards long executive work hours. There are rules for the blue-collar workforce category stipulated by various governments through strict labour regulations. These also have additional compensation mechanisms in terms of overtime and defined periods of engagement. However, when it comes to the white-collar executive category, it is the wild west where nothing seems to work with very faint rules to be followed. An average executive is immersed with so much extra workload and no end in sight for their woes. Whether it is weekends, late evenings or holidays, work assignments never end. It is either the directions from higher-ups or tight timeline pressures that keep them embroiled at work. I agree most of this is not self-owned but passed through their seniors in the corporate ladder. Companies and their leaders need to be mindful of the impact of extra workload and how it is playing havoc with employees’ lives. Their family lives are wreaked, health hazards are taking its toll on their life longevity, and their mental health issues are raking up the entire corporate work ecosystem. How should we control this?
It won’t be fair to blame it on corporates alone, but most workplaces are facing this. Be it private, government, or even NGOs, this challenge exists. It is widely prevalent across the globe, with indeed corporates leading it with their lion share in it. Especially in the big cities, it is having assumed an epidemic proportion. The combination of long commuting hours, high rentals, high lifestyle costs and long hours at work is horrendous. This is also not just in one region, industry or sector but generally ruling prevalent in most workplaces.
From the very health sustainability issue, there needs to be a balance between working hours and requisite off time that any individual requires. The COVID19 pandemic has only added to these woes, with extended hours becoming a new normal. The dividing line between work and life has disappeared with work coming to the doorstep and living rooms, further creating another challenge in this already aberrated situation.
In pursuit of ambitious results, company leadership often ignores the team’s capability to take on these aggressive projects wherein work pressures drive the executive insane. Often this becomes a final deadline issue with high expectations of qualitative output criteria. To put such demands and the Wishlist, the leaders often ignore the team’s ability and the requisite mindset to deliver under severe pressure. These are Do or Die situations for executives as they knew that their failure to meet expectations would result in corporate reprimands or in misses to work in future opportunities.
Indeed, governments in Europe and certain corporates have made some progress in this regard. However, today GenZ has awakened themselves on this and head on taking on these practices by opting for work-life balance then these top jobs where work seems no end.
I, as CEO, realize this. Indeed, this is a burning issue and a deterrent in workplace happiness in their retention. This is a compelling issue that I need to address. How to maintain this delicate issue and what must be done to bring some semblance to corporate lifestyles and tenable working culture. Here, quality must not be viewed from a one-sided perspective of corporate results and teams output but be seen from employee well-being and happiness.
The Governments and Corporates have to take a saner view on the state of affairs concerning long working hours and its impact on the lifestyles of working executives. These need to fix a certain level of maximum hours limit on executive working hours. Moreover, productivity aspects are to be studied and mapped before company managements embark on ambitious timelines and projects. Competent and efficient does not mean that people can work on long hours. Anything more than twelve hours of continuous work will impact productivity and for sure not sustainable. Therefore, definite guiding principles and rules of engagement be enforced with the help of management and HR experts to arrive at some level of a purge of working practices at most organizations.
These reviews must go beyond work-life balance considerations. Still, more on average human capability and sustainable health also takes other perspectives like age group and individual status. Companies need to closely assess their work culture and team formations to ensure that work is equally distributed and no group or individual is left coping with an extra workload. There should be work blackout hours like lunch, family dinner timings and late hours to ensure minimum sleeping hours. Team leaders and their managers must take extra care that any team member has not been given more than the capability or is left alone with residual workloads that are not reasonable.
Corporates need to be mindful of enforcing strict weekly work hours limit, if not daily but are monitored through their devices as self-monitoring may not work. Managers and c suite must not pass work and orders without carefully reviewing work schedules, ensuring person-days with max work hours, not just rough estimates.
Corporates do not need to worry about their financial impact from such actions as such measures often lead to better work performance and productivity, improved discipline, and reduced sick leaves, which more than compensate for any lost hours of work.
I have now started working on this as a particular project addressing different aspects. We have formed a team of HR to take inputs from well-being experts and management experts to build a more cohesive and robust work culture where no individual is exposed to more than 60 hours of weekly work hours. It is time everyone reviews this to support the overall wellbeing of all staff and ensure sustainability in their work-life balance.