Advocating a five day workweek

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The standard working hours for each country is regulated by laws. The weekly working hours of most of the countries in the world is about 40-48 hours; beyond which overtime payment is made for the excess hours worked. Standard weekly working hours in France is 35hours (lucky French!!) and 112 hours in North Korea (Damn you, King Jong!)

Some companies follow a weekly 5 working day regime whilst others follow 6. In most Western countries, the working days are Monday to Friday. Muslim countries generally have a Friday–Saturday weekend. The Labour Act of Nepal sets the maximum no. of working hours as 48 hours a week however, the time of commencement of working hours and number of days has been left open for the companies to decide. Similar is the case with India.

I recently watched a video ‘A week in the life of a Tokyo salary man’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8IPh64rVM. The fact that so many people lead such a life was just horrifying! There are so many cases of heart attacks and deaths due to prolonged working hours; may it be in a developing nation like India or a developed nation like the USA. I wonder how people endure it? Why can't all the employees around the world have a five day workweek? We need time for ourselves. We need time to spend the money we earn. We need time for our family and kids. We need time to recharge to come back to work again on Monday and give our 100%. What is the point in coming back to office with a tired mind and not being able to work properly? Or what is the point in coming to office to write blogs :P and pay bills? Every employer should understand that there is a vast difference between working hours and effective working hours. I even believe that the Companies Act should include, ‘providing working off to employees’ in the list of CSR activity (not kidding!). The general welfare of the employee is a corporate social responsibility, don’t you think?

One of my friends has very complicated office work timings. She has to work from 10:00 to 6:00 every day and half a day on Saturday (10:00- 2:00). On Saturday, she ends up travelling 50kms (3 hours both ways) to work for a meagre 2.5hours. She says ’Saturdays, people end up spending more time in the cafeteria than on work. I don’t know why the management still insists on us coming to the office on Saturdays. It’s so inconvenient’.

I did some maths to calculate the real effectiveness of the weekly working hours in various case     scenarios- Case 1: 5 day workweek; Case 2: 5 ½ day workweek; and Case 3: 6 day workweek. The results are as follows:



As you can clearly see, a 5 day workweek (Case 1) is the most ideal situation as the effective working hours is the highest i.e. 36 hours. Employees need motivation. They have to feel that the organization that they work with actually cares for them. Responsibilities can never be coerced; they have to be perceived. 

Also, there are numerous other benefits due to reduced number of working days:
  • Reduced number of vehicles thereby resulting in reduction of consumption of fuel and reduced pollution
  •  Recent articles have proved that reduced working days lead to increase level of consumption thereby invigorating the economy
  • Improvements to worker's level of education (due to having extra time to take classes and courses) and improvements to worker's health (less work-related stress and extra time for exercise)
  • By closing offices on Saturdays and Sundays, operating costs such as electricity, heat, air conditioning, and gasoline can be drastically saved  


I hope that someday, the government/ companies will realize the importance of  reduced working hours and come up with a relevant policy to benefit all the  employees around the world.

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