Social Media is divided in two with the recent comments of Infosys Founder Narayan Murti, advising young workers to work at least 70 hours a week. Hottest topic of debate on social media today is about the working hours. Some countries where in the working hours are reduced to 4 days working, on the other hand Indians work for 6 days a week in most companies. With banks and government institutions taking off on second and 4th Saturday, multinational companies work for 5 days a week. However the work pressure, targets and timelines schedule often leads to extra working hours for the employees.
Most of the business owners especially MSME’s work for much more time than their employees and their comments are more aligned towards what Murti has said. The young employees on the other hand need time to settle in their jobs, find proper places to live and arrange for the food and lodging as most of them work far from their homes. Working for longer hours would make their life to chaotic as one twitter user said. Others also mentioned their issues with mental health, depression and physical health when they work for longer hours in their initial jobs.
Country like India that is developing fast and need talent to work hard realizing the dream of entering the club of developed countries. Others also commented mentioning the working hours of Prime Minister Modi who works for almost 18 hours a day at the age of 73. Most of the officials that works with PM Modi have mentioned this in public platforms that they also work for 15 hours a day on an average since they started working with PM Modi. The issue is debatable though the young Indians need to understand their responsibility too, as a number of them are more worried for their working hours, rather than the quality of work they do.
One HR Manager from an Indian IT company mentioned in an interview that most of the candidates that he interviews for jobs, have the first question about the holidays and the salary. He insisted that the focus should be more on the quality of work they would be required to do and what they can learn from their new job. One Entrepreneur from a small town when asked about the candidates and the job market was quite perplexed with the kind of candidates available in the market. He said India has educated job seekers but employable candidates are very less in number.
The other issue the bigger companies are facing is about the job shifting of employees. As soon as the candidate gets a little experience, they try and find another job with a little more salary. Thus the companies are always spending more to recruit and train new people. There are several instances wherein the companies in the same sector have aligned to draft policies where they do not hire candidates working in their companies for a certain period of time.
So the big question remains will longer working hours good for Young Indians – add your comments in the section below