Employees working extra hours

There is always a perspective where when people work extra hours, it means that they are hard-working. I have seen this happening in many places. My manager used to tell me a lot about this. He explains saying that the actual hard and smart worker is someone who is able to manage all his office works within the time scheduled for him in the office. If someone is unable to do the office works within the given office hours, it is either that the person is not managing the time properly or the management is failing to associate the proper timeframe for the employee. But apart from these to things, there are also a few more reasons as to why employees end up working extra hours.

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Some people might have this question in mind. Is it bad to work extra hours? It purely depends on the type of work a person is doing and can differ from person to person and from one job to another. If you ask me this question, I would say that smart working is something to do with defining how much work you can complete within the time frame. It is purely time management and if we could properly manage the time, there will not be any need for extra hours work. But if the extra hours of work are something to do with self-learning, I would suggest there is no harm in spending that extra hour for good.

If we look at this from a global perspective or from the company's perspective, we can say a few reasons why this can happen. I'm going to explain each case in a short paragraph.

The employee is not managing the time properly

This is quite usual and very common in many companies. The employees are not capable of managing the work given to them. They tend to take too many breaks or lazy to do the work in the given time. Some people even give a lame excuse saying that they find it comfortable to work when there is no one around in the office.

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The workload in the team is not measurable or variable

In some companies, this usually happens where the team's workload is not easy to predict. The support desk can be taken as a good example of this. These are exceptional cases and the employees end up working late hours trying to reduce the backlogs. The workload can sometimes be very minimal and sometimes be too much to handle.

Poor management of work and expecting so much from an employee

This happens in many companies where the managers expect so much from the employees. When they give project estimates the manager makes mistakes and give improper estimates without proper contingencies. This can lead to project extensions and late hours of working. This is something to blame the management where they make employees suffer because of poor management of work. As the error happens, they expect the employees to work hard to complete the project in a short time frame.

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Lack of budget and resources

This is a common and lame reason given by many companies to the employees. Especially when the employees are locked with bonds and dire need to work in the team, the management cuts down the budget and also additional resource allocation. It also happens for the contract employees where the companies pay only a fixed amount to the employees and try to extract out so much from the employee. As the employees sign the contract, they will not even be able to close the contract.

Working extra hours for passion

This is the part where I admire the most. I'm one of the employees who fall under this category. I'm not going to say that everyone should work extra hours for passion but I really enjoy working extra hours because I'm passionate about reading and learning new things. This is something that works for me. Every single day, I sit for over 2 to 5 hours extra in the office reading so many things related to my career or my skill set. This has really helped me learn so many thing in the past two years.

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In my humble opinion, if employees are concerned about their personal development, I would definitely recommend working extra hours to satisfy their passion for their work. It not only helps the organization to which they work, but it also helps in personal development.