Comparison of working hours in India with other countries. Image Courtesy – http://newsatjama.jama.com
In Asia, many nations have the status for long working hours. Woking hours of East Asian countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea etc. are well above the US in terms of ‘average hours worked per year’.
According official statistics after surveying the people of Canada in the year 2012, report said that Canadians worked with an average of 36.6 hours per week. It depended on age, gender, location etc. During the past decade, governments of Japan and South Korea have taken initiatives to bring down the working hours to upgrade employee health and quality of life.
A survey performed on the people who had spent long time in Japan while studying and working there. The report of the study revealed that working for long hours were still usual. Expectation from the employee’s point of view to have a ‘lifetime employment’ was usually discarded. Surprisingly, the system of long working hours has taken place. Some people were died due to extreme stress caused by working in excess of 60 hours per week, a report revealed in 1993. It was a common feature that full-time workers worked at an average of 60 hours or more in a week.
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Survey on India reported that working hours in India used to be 9 hours, but that also could change depending on the industry, international contracts etc. Working hours might be settled to odd time zones depending on contracts with other companies of different time zones. Suppose, working for a UK-based company, a worker used to work from 4pm to 12am or 6pm to 2am. It was very common to see workers in BPO and IT sectors used to work from 2am to 11pm at metro cities in India.
IT sector in India is generally prone to have long working hours. It is suppose to be 8 hours per day, but practically it varies between 10-12 hours. The working hours in IT sectors extend to more depending on pressure and deadline of projects. Jobs like ‘Public Relation’, ‘Design’ is comparatively flexible and relaxed. But industries like ‘banking’, ‘financial’, ‘retail’ etc. are more pressure oriented. Some companies in India use to operate a six-day working week, which is more or less similar to other countries of the world.
