The Ideal 70-Hour Work Week — One That ISN'T Toxic
Recently, co-founder of Infosys Mr. Narayana Murthy commented on the Indian youth’s work ethic, and at the speed of Internet Explorer I have come up with a middle-ground.
Narayana Murthy has struck a debate over the recent judgement of how the Indian economy can prosper by the virtue of our enormous working population. “My request is that our youngsters must say, ‘this is my country, I want to work 70 hours a week,’” he recently stated. Furthermore, the fact that in his youth he worked for 80-90 hours per week has been illuminated by Mrs. Sudha Murthy in a recent interview, in his defense.
Debates have erupted all over the internet over this, opinions being contributed by some pretty experienced people, and then also by gremlins like me.
While Mr. Murthy’s intentions are noble, a 70-hour work week is simply impractical. “Oh? But people already work for 72, 100, 300 hours a week, and it pays off!” Maybe not, but let’s assume that. That still definitely hurts the health and productivity of an individual, so while more work might be done, less is being done on an hourly basis by far. If we consider a 70-hour work week with a single day off, that is more than 11 hours of work every single day. While some of us may enjoy working that long, not everyone has the ability to stay fueled for 11 hours even with breaks.
However, there are a few things the corporate world can implement in order to ascertain a 70-hour work week that doesn’t make their employees question their lives every morning:
1. Hourly Rate
It is only fair for companies to switch to paying employees on an hourly basis rather than making them work for a rigid amount if they aim to work them such long hours. People who work for longer hours than they signed up for don’t even realize that they’re practically working for free in those extra hours.
Hourly “wages” would have their own disadvantages, but in a scenario where the rate is fair, it would work well with such a huge amount of work hours.
2. Side Project Time
Google is famously known for giving its developers the option to spend 20% of their time to work on a side projects and explore, without suffering any deductions in monthly salary. Well, it’s less infamously also known for stopping that, but while the 20% rule was enforced, Google developed some of its most successful tools like AdSense and Gmail. I couldn’t find any case studies about the 20% rule, but if they exist, I need to read them. Till then, I can fairly state that letting employees do side projects or giving them stipends would definitely make life at work much better, 70-hour work week or not.
I found this list of companies that pay their engineers for learning, with time off. Unless the list is outdated, this may be pretty useful for some out there!
3. Long Breaks
Breaks are crucial in order to ensure productivity. But by long breaks, I mean long breaks. For 11 hours of work 6 days a week anyone deserves a lot of pampering. Ideally I’d love myself this sort of shift:
| Work | Break | Work | Break | Work |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 hours | 2 hours | 4 hours | 1 hours | 3 hours |
11 hours of work with 3 hours of breaks. This combined with bonus point 1 would mean a pretty good work-life balance. And you could even nap, if you wanted to! Sounds like a dream. A nap dream.
Although, maybe someone more experienced might make a much better schedule than that.
Companies could also implement certain elements in order to make their breaks more fruitful. Which brings us to our next point.
4. Distractions
This is something big tech firms and alike already do but it’s still worth mentioning. Employees would definitely feel more at home in their office if companies provide them with things that make home – hobbies, pastimes, eh, even food. Anything that isn’t work. A simple thought experiment is enough to realize that an employee working long hours with bland, boring breaks, would suffer a much lesser productivity than someone working at a company with an awesome HR team that makes the workplace feel like home.
5. Voluntary Opt-In
It is important for a company to be loyal to their employees just as an employee must be loyal to their source of income. Therefore, it is very important that, in the rare case that long work weeks (as said by Mr. Murthy) become commonplace, that they remain voluntary.
Not everyone, even with the many reparations (for the lack of a better word) listed, would like to work extra-long hours, and that’s totally okay. Not to mention, not everyone works just to earn more and more, or to further their field of work. It is a sad reality that a lot of people do not even like the field they’re working in. So ideally, the 70-hour work week should be voluntary.
There are more things companies could do, specially in India (but in no way limited to the nation alone), that aren’t really related to the 70-hour work week, but worth mentioning:
Bonus Point 1: Strategic Housing
Strategic housing…? What?! Let me explain.
What I mean is that companies could help employees find the right place to live in, in order to work efficiently. Yeah I know, it’s already done by many MNCs, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. A big company can definitely help its employees ensure that they find a location close to the workplace.
This would also enable staff to utilize their breaks to go home and spend time more comfortably by themselves. Although that sounds too much like a fairy tale, it is not impossible for big companies to have staff residence or tie up with local builders to make sure there’s always living space nearby.
This is akin to something BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) does for its working staff’s families. BARC has it’s own township (not too far away from my college, in fact) where its working staff live.
Bonus Point 2: Integration Into Education
Local companies could partner with prestigious colleges and even schools in order to train the next generation of working population. At first this may sound very dystopian, but honestly, our current system of education is what is.
Integrating practical work projects into higher education would definitely inculcate the work ethic that Narayana Murthy wishes the youth to have, and maybe we might not even need a 70-hour work week! Quality youth population would automatically confirm a much higher productivity and actual progress, not just progress on paper.
That day is far from now, but it isn’t impossible to achieve. The alternative is rather dystopian, a society in which we throw away our “selves” for the sake of the world GDP going up or something absolutely crazy like that. And we definitely don’t want that. Maybe with future changes in education and work policies, we might become a much more productive society all the while being excellent, quality individuals.