Indian Workforce – Hard working or Hardly Working ?

One of the oft repeated things I hear at general conversations is how hard working Indians are. And all of it revolves around how much time we spend in office. Since my current experience is restricted to the IT field , I’ll use that industry as an example.

Most Indians especially in the IT industry claim to put in 12 – 15 hours of work every day. That adds up to a massive 60 - 75 hrs every week even assuming a 5 day week.  And this is way above the average Western weekly hours of between 40 and 45.

However when we compare productivity, using definable measures as an output we fare very badly even if we do not factor in the additional hours. In other words, we produce less in 60 - 75 hours as compared to what is produced as a definable measure. We decided at our organization that this issue was serious enough to investigate. And we came across several very interesting observations. Whilst these observations are based on our workplace, I think it may be applicable across the IT vertical and in all likelihood in other industries too.

To measure the total hours spent at office, we used the existing system of biometric login / logout. We have 1 hour of flexible breaks for tea, lunch, et al and these were automatically discounted from the total hours spent in office. We had asked people how much time they spent in office. And then compared this number with the actual results. The perceived time spent at office after deducting 1 hour of breaks was 12 hours. The actual results showed that the average was under 9 hours. And this was the first observation. We tend to overestimate the time we spend, and hence reach erroneous conclusions about our hard work.

This still did not explain the significant productivity differential that remained. Especially so as we believed that we were as competent if not more so than our counterparts. And as the world believes as smart, if not smarter. And hence if there were to be a skew in results, it should have been in our favor. And wanted to find out more.

We decided to start measuring actual working hours. We selected a random set of people and decided to measure hours spent at their desk and away. The results were shocking. Of the average 10 hours spent in office, an average of 3.5 hours were breaks. With some examples of as much as 4.5 hours. An example of the timings will throw light on the pattern.

09.30 : Walk in and login
09.40 : Keep bag at desk, start PC, login to intranet and go for tea / breakfast
10.20 : Return to desk
11.20 : Go for tea break
11.40 : Return to desk
13.30 : Go for lunch
14.40 : Return to desk
15.50 : Go for tea break
16.20 : Return to desk
17.30 : Go for tea break
18.00 : Return to desk
18.50 : Go for snacks break
19.20 : Return to desk, logout of intranet, pack stuff
19.30 : Leave for day

The above shows that there were 6 breaks taken. The total hours in office 10 hours. Total time used in breaks a massive 240 minutes or 4 hours. Time at desk 6 hours. Of these, an additional average of 1 hour was used up in personal calls, the traditional Indian chit chat, bathroom breaks, and a myriad of small but unconnected activities. Leaving just 5 hours of work.

With costs constantly rising, especially HR costs, our competitive edge is dramatically reducing. The Philippines have already overtaken us in global BPO outsourcing. Unless, we as a nation especially our youngsters wake up to the realities of life and stop asking the only question they currently do, which is “What’s in it for me”, but start asking “What’s in it for them”, where them being the outsourcer companies, our utilization globally will drop. And we would have lost yet another golden opportunity to be the workforce for the world in IT, as we have earlier in finance, shipping and aviation.

Bottom line, let’s work less. 9 hours in office is sufficient. But work productively for a full 8 hours. Hours that we get paid good money for.