"Focus on your skill development now," "increase your efficiency; it's for your own good," "You have the potential to be the 'Performer of the Month.' Just stick to it" -- these are some common offerings to the new entrants in the corporate-work culture. And there are few who can differ.
"It's like a scheme of capitalism. It will say you are the best and no one else can do this without you (making you more responsible for it)," shared Sajib Sakhawat, a fourth-year student of Physics at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST). Although May Day established the eight-hour workday long ago, Sajib reasons, office makes it easily 10/12 hours a day with those sweet traps.
The writer asked some private employees to share their experiences regarding the corporate world. For obvious reasons, many did not feel it right to speak up, while some shared their experiences with an anonymous identity.
"When I joined the job as a copywriter, the group had a few more members apart from me. At the end of the day, everyone's quantity of work was noted. From the day when the 'Performer of the Month' was introduced, they all started working even during the break," Mehedi Hasan (pseudonym), content creator of a private company, shared.
"As a result, my performance dropped compared to them. If I didn't have lunch on time, that was physical torture. And if I had, there was a team leader's comment on my efficiency, which was breaking my confidence."
Can an employee's productivity really be determined by the number of tasks? When there are many types of people working in a team, some provide quantity, some provide quality, some provide creativity. How reasonable is it to calculate the efficiency of all with similar criteria?
"One of the most commonly used metaphors for the basics of business strategy is 'If there is a hole, fill it. If there is no hole, then make a hole and fill it.' The assurance of skill development of the corporate houses reflects the same," Shuvro Chowdhury, a junior software engineer at a reputed local IT firm, shared.
The bottom line is that when the office does not have enough scope to provide employees with skills development, in most cases, they create illusions. "Suppose you have various social media apps known and used for communication. But without using those, they will introduce you to a random app. Over time, you will comfort yourself by thinking that you learnt something new."
"When the percentage of work decreases, the team leader often says- 'The evaluation of promotion will be from here.' I know about the state of my eye-sight in the last few months by doing my own good (!)," Nishat Majumder, a senior copywriter of a private advertising agency, was speaking.
"If I can do eight hours equivalent work in just two hours, the office will not let me sit idle for the remaining six hours, even if I'm sick. So why would I do so much work together? When they announce 'Worker of the Year,' they will evaluate who worked overtime and who took less leave than others." she added.
In this case, to hear the story of the other side of the coin, the writer talked to some senior officials who had different perspectives to share. "If the effort to bring out the best from the employees is called overwork culture, then who would be responsible for increasing the efficiency of an incompetent immature worker?" asked Fariha Nowshin, expansion sales lead at Staff Asia Limited.
"Everyone has some potential inside them that they are not using just because of laziness or apathy. If some members in a team are not working sensibly, someone, who can pull off 10 tasks within a time period is doing only five-- then there is no point to deal with company loss to protect their individuality." If efficiency and productivity can be increased by a little inspiration and co-operation, thinks Fariha, the real success of a team-lead or HR lies there.
According to Fariha, an employee will feel pressure only when s/he is not enjoying the job. In that case, everyone should explore what s/he likes to do. She shared how difficult it was for her to catch the target of writing 12 copies a day. But when she finally made it there, her team leaders treated it rather lightlly, mentioning that he used to write 15 copies during his time in that position.
She was not disappointed by those words. Rather, she doubled her enthusiasm and improved her skills so much that she even wrote up to 33 copies a day. "The road from five to 33 was never stressful to me because I loved my job. And if I didn't take that as inspiration, I would never know about my capacity too," she smiled.
"Whether it's an IT firm or any other corporate house, regular overtime working is never a good practice. It's painful to the employees and degrades the quality of work," remarked Bipon Biswas, senior UX designer at Pridesys It Limited. "But I find it very unprofessional to neglect the responsibilities by calling them 'overwork' when it comes to dealing with a deadline."
While recruiting employees, he recalls mentioning during the interview about such occasional overtime work. Since everyone's responsibilities in a company are shared separately, according to him, remembering the responsibilities in special circumstances, the employees should cooperate with the company to face the deadline.
There will be competition in the job market, there will be hard work and fatigue; in between, there will be success, happiness and self-development. The key is to decide what attracts one the most.
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