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RIP to 9-5 Working Hours · Mark and Pete

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  RIP to 9:00 to 5:00 working hours.
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  Welcome to Mark and Pete's. And now we're talking about
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  certain features of working today, like emails at midnight,
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  Slack messages at breakfast, and Zoom calls before coffee.
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  Maybe you know what I'm talking about.
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  This is Mark and Pete, 2 blokes with half an opinion.
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  Now here's our first. Thought the traditional days of
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  working 9:00 to 5:00 simply no longer applies anymore as many
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  busy businesses aim to thrive and overheads rapidly soar.
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  Worker hours are stretching for greater drive to keep the walls
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  from the door, but this may mean you might not survive when
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  expected to work 24. Oh yes?
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  Well, the pressures on the workforce today are very
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  different. Many businesses are reaching
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  tight deadlines and they're having to do more now.
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  The traditional ways of working from 9:00 to 5:00, clocking in
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  and clocking out seem to be long gone.
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  Many people are not only being asked to stretch their hours
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  through the day, but in some cases even working through the
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  weekend. In fact, there is a new trend
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  that seems to be happening, which is called 996.
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  Yes, that's the idea of 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM six days a week.
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  Hence 999. Or maybe it should be 999.
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  Where's the emergency? Yes, when they call the
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  ambulance. So Mr. Pete, I ask you, what's
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  your thoughts on this 996? It does seem to be an extensive
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  amount of hours that people are asking to to be working,
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  especially the idea of creeping into the weekend.
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  Whatever happened to personal time?
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  How do we cope? Is this now the new modern way
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  of working? Yeah, well I I don't have a
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  problem with the 6th day a week as long as you know, you get
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  good rest each night and then a full day off on the 7th day.
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  I mean you know the general pattern going back to biblical
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  times, 6 days you shall labour, but the 7th day is a Sabbath to
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  the Lord your God is how he goes in Exodus 20.
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  You know, people are often conveniently forget or say they
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  don't remember the fact that you meant to work for six days.
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  They remember the day off. Yeah.
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  But you know, work, work life balance is important.
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  And what what we've found over the years, whenever people have
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  tried to bypass this to not give people enough rest, the
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  productivity in terms of quality as well as quantity goes down.
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  So it's not just bad for the employees.
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  That's important, but it's bad really for business as a whole.
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  Well, you're not going to get good results if people are
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  overworked and overtired. Well, indeed.
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  In fact, there's an unusual bit of culture here, and this
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  probably started about a decade ago or maybe more for some,
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  depending on where you work. But the 996 culture first came
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  to the fore in China a decade ago, and it was embraced by tech
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  companies or even star companies, start-ups who were
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  thinking about, well, how do they get that edge?
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  How do they find more out of their workforce?
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  In some cases, the idea of having a world's workshop for
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  cheap goods into a leader in advanced technologies.
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  Now, this is something that, again, we've seen sort of
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  creeping into the the West, you know, whether it be in Europe
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  and in America. So the idea behind 996 as
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  opposed to let's call 999 folks, is the idea is that the
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  entrepreneurs can allow workers, whether they are artists,
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  whether they're scientists, whether they are officials,
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  politicians even, that they can actually do more.
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  That's the opportunity to do more, that they can advance
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  their careers in a way that maybe the 9 to 5 was limiting.
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  And I can sort of see some points behind that because once
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  you had to clock off, it meant that some of the project work
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  was delayed. So the idea is you have more
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  fluidity, I think is a good one. But the downside is, is that,
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  you know, many, many companies can get away with the
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  exploitation by taking more and more owners, putting more owners
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  on the employee. Now, some people say, hold on,
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  wait a minute, what about regulation?
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  But there is something else to note here and that is many
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  people will probably look at their little employment
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  contracts and you may have noticed that there's a little
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  box which says click here. And that's the principle that
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  you will not take your employer to court for having to be asked
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  to work beyond the 9:00 to 5:00. And that certainly gets around
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  the exemption rule then so that effectively employees can't sort
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  of make any claim. But the similarly, again, that
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  the workforce, that's the employer can actually also make
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  demands. And yeah, I'm going to say, Mr.
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  Pete, that when it comes to the way that we're working today is
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  that more people are either working at home, which means
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  that they have the opportunity to work many different hours.
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  They don't have to necessarily get a bus, get a train or any
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  anything like that. So the the structure of the day
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  and the way the people are working is very different from
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  where it was 20-30 years ago. So.
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  I'm going to ask you, do you see a concern for the way that the
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  workforce is going now in the sense that you're too much of A
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  burnout or do you think that this is just a new way of
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  adaptation for the modern industry?
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  No, I, I, I see the, the format, I see that it's, it's heading
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  for burnout. If you go down this route.
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  I, I think that is important to have in your contracts or term
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  terms of, of, of service terms, sorry, not terms of service,
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  terms of employment, that there's that there should be
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  flexibility, but that doesn't, that doesn't, in fact, legally
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  it doesn't stop, doesn't stop, doesn't prevent you from
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  refusing to work because under, under the law in Britain at
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  least, you're not allowed to work more than 48 hours per
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  week. And sadly that's on average, so,
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  and it's calculator, I believe over 17 weeks normally.
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  So you could end up working a huge number of hours in one
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  week. I think that that's an
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  oversight. I think there should be a limit
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  on one week that this is the 1998 Working Time Regulations
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  Act. There was a case a few years
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  ago. I looked it up because we're
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  talking about this back in 2013. There's a Japanese journalist,
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  Miwa Sado, who was, was, was working and she she died from
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  overwork. She did 159 hours in a single
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  month. And there was a famous case at
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  the time. So you do, we do need to be
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  careful not just of not just of having no, not the average time
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  being too much, but you know, in a particular week, I don't know
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  what it would be set at, but they need to be extenuating
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  circumstances. I think it can be, it can be
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  made such that the employer has to justify it as such that it
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  can be a rare thing. It's a, it's a tricky area
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  because you as an employer, you, you know, I've worked in leading
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  small businesses where you do need people to put in extra
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  hours sometime and you don't want lazy workers taking
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  advantage of you. But on the other hand, you don't
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  really want to kill your workers just just to get the job done.
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  So it's a balancing act as I'm not going to come down on the
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  side of saying the employer shouldn't, shouldn't be asking
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  people to work extra hours. What I'm saying is there need to
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  be a nuanced approach and perhaps an adaptation or in in
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  the UK of that 1998 act. Well, interestingly, I always
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  look to many business leaders in this sort of scenario and here's
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  one search. Mr. Dee Dee Das is a partner at
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  Menlo Ventures venture capital firm, and the point being is he
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  thinks that most common mistake by young entrepreneurs that they
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  make is insisting that their employees actually work this 996
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  style hours. But what he's saying is that
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  long hours does not mean that staff are being productive or
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  work efficiently. Which I think is actually a very
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  important point here because it might be that you're given a
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  project or a task in some cases and it might only take you maybe
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  an hour to do something, as opposed to the fact that some
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  people might take a whole day. The fact that somebody does it
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  efficiently, accurately on time and it's validated the fact that
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  they took an hour. So what if they got the job
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  done? Great.
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  You don't literally have to be burning all of the hours through
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  the night just simply to to sort of fill the time.
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  So I think what Mr. Das is saying here is you have to sort
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  of think a little bit differently.
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  And it's interesting. He uses this concept of the idea
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  that, you know, forcing your employees to come in and hustle,
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  as they say, is a downstream artifact of, of such of a
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  certain mindset. And this is not always good.
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  In fact, what's also being said is that some people have said
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  this household culture is unsustainable to your point,
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  especially if people feel compelled to be working all the
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  time. Because eventually if you build
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  a culture here, it's not just about an individual, it's about
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  the department. And then suddenly the culture
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  expects you to be there all the time.
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  So this is, this is a challenge, I guess that there there is a, a
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  sort of a, a challenge here is what works.
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  I mean, basically, how do you, how do you manage this when
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  you've got law saying that typically you should work on
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  let's say 37 1/2 hours or 40 hours a week.
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  But yet, you know your employer is demanding that you do more,
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  and it's finding that balance, isn't it?
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  Yes, it is difficult and the problem in interacting with your
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  employer is of course you, you don't want to be let go.
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  I mean, you can easily let go someone as in fire them for
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  other reasons. You know, you don't want to
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  annoy your employer. And on the other hand, as as an
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  employer, you don't want your workers to be unhappy because
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  they're not going to be working well.
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  So it it is a balancing act and, and in the end, it's that sort
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  of negotiation and to and fro that it's going to produce the
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  best results. You need unions to have a
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  reasonable amount of power, but not not too high power.
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  And you need the employees, the employers power to be limited by
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  the laws that we've just been quoting.
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  Just to add one more layer to this.
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  So when you end up working in the public sector, so you don't
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  you've got again, different pressures on you and once and
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  and and in that situation, you can end up with instead of you
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  can have the hours being perfectly well regulated, but
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  then you're not allowed to work more hours in order to get more
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  money. You can't do that so well
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  indeed, if anything too far the other way as people, you know,
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  if maybe amongst our business people who work for the NHS,
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  which I believe is the largest employer in Britain, so.
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  Well, there. You go, so they have that issue.
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  You can't, you can't work more hours.
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  So let's it's, it's always a balancing act.
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  It's new. This is a nuanced issue, but
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  working more than 48 hours a week for most people is too
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  much. Well, what do our listeners
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  think? We'd love to hear from you.
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  Are you being asked to burn the candle at both ends?
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  And does it get on your wig?