These days, many work places have introduced the policy of “come early to work and leave early from work”. Basically, the work timings would be 7am to 2pm or 8am to 3pm.
Employers cite many advantages to the employees:
- When you come early, there’s less traffic on the roads. So you can commute quickly to work. When you leave also, there will be less traffic. So you can reach home early.
- You get extra time in the evening for doing your work. You feel less tired. You get more time to relax in the evenings.
Reality of this from the employee perspective:
- Every single day, you tend to rush to work. So there is no peace every single morning. You may not be able to go for walk or any other work out in the morning time.
- At times, which is most of the times, you’ll not be able to sign out on time. There is some pending work and you end up staying late until your work is completed.
- Added to this, if you are in a teaching job and if there are events, you are mandated to stay late. There won’t be any compensation in the form of coming late the next day.
- If you are in a teaching job, you may have to come on Saturday and Sundays too when events are scheduled. Such events are scheduled at least 2-3 times in a semester.
- The time between 3pm and 5pm is the most unproductive time for a human being. You cannot do any proper work at this time, because your mind and body need some rest. Very well aware of this fact, employers ensure that you go home and waste the time doing nothing.
- Morning 7-9am is a good time to reflect and start your day. This is the best quality time you get when your mind is fresh. But this precious time is taken away at your work or traveling. The worst time of the day – that is 3-5pm is given to you to waste! Wonderful.
- Since most work places these days have mandated early work, traffic is now jammed during 7-8am. And traffic is less after 9am!! So the traffic advantage is nullified!
Advantages to the employers, which they don’t tell openly:
- Early morning, workers are fresh and have full energy. So the employers can suck all the energy early.
- Give targets to complete. But never tell the workers to stay back. If workers stay back to complete the targets, you blame and gaslight the workers that they are inefficient or lazy!
- Around 3pm to 5pm, human bodies and minds need some rest. This is the less productive time. So during this time, the workers are sent home. Just shows the mentality of how people take all the flesh from an animal and throw away the bones. Same! We need you during your best. When you are tired, we don’t need you at all.
Reality Check at a Government University:
Once I had visited a State Government run university for some work. I was told that the examination section employees were given off (holiday) for a week. And hence I had to come a week later. When I enquired, I was told that the University convocation was held the previous week. The examination section staff had worked 1 hour extra every day (5:30 to 6:30pm) for about 15 days. Hence they had been given a compensatory off for a week. This is a practice that’s been happening every year. Being a worker in a private institution, I was surprised and shocked to learn about this!
Key Takeaway:
The key takeaway of the early work strategy is that: employees come early at 7am or 8am. If there is some pending work (which usually would be!), you may end up staying till almost 6pm! Which is like 3-4 hours extra. But compare this with Government run institutions where the sign out time is usually 5:00pm or 5:30pm, even if they have to work extra, they may start complaining by 6pm, because they have to go and start cooking or do the household chores. You cannot make the employees work for more than 1 hour! And if the employees are strong enough, they are able to demand compensatory leave for the extra hours worked.
In my experience, I’ve seen very few people who can be focused at work and are able to leave on time. This is something we need to learn.
Update on February 28th 2025: a friend of mine working in a law school located in Noida area had told me that their law school has changed the timings and they start by 7am and end by 2pm. When I asked if they are having meetings or any events scheduled after 2pm, he said, no. He seemed happy with the timings. Today when I spoke to him casually, he said that the schedule was great for the first two months. Now as the semester progresses, slowly their college is scheduling meetings and events after 2pm. In the last one week, he had to attend meetings on three days that went beyond 2pm. The longest one going till 5:30pm. So next time someone says they’ll end early, take it with a lot of salt and a lot of suspicion!
