Everyone longs for breaks or weekend breaks. Certain things never cease to brush our existence like the morning sunbeams. One such fact is the row or debate about having or not 5-day weeks in organizations. One camp never tires of demonstrating the absence of any link between productivity and moments of leisure. Their advocates claim loudly that all that noise about work-life balance and productivity issues is nothing more than a mindset and has to be outgrown. Work has its own rules of planning and management and the success of all deadline-driven projects clearly show the empty rhetoric behind keeping weekend breaks.
In contrast the adversarial view holds that there is nothing like a relaxed mind for better and sustained work results. There should always be adequate time for personal and familial matters and weekends afford just that. Success and efficiency directly arise from Monday-to-Friday work cycle with mini breaks, golf breaks, getaways thrown in.
I personally have tasted the results of both the worldviews. Having worked for all 7 days in one of the previous organizations proved one thing beyond doubt- one was spared the agony of contending with traffic and a better concentration marked one’s undertakings in office. In fact, heading for office on Saturdays and Sundays did help in bringing one’s image down before neighbours. However, the feeling was one of extreme pride and exclusiveness while one headed home in the evening after punching out. Needless to say, in the beginning the fact of no weekend breaks was shocking and nerve-wracking to come to terms with.
Sympathizing with the Weekly-breaks culture, one can safely conclude one thing – in today’s reality of global business interactions and multiple time zones, one invariably takes work back home almost daily after office gets over. This naturally gives a cold shoulder to family and personal affairs leaving weekends as the only days worth looking forward to. So ahoy to the followers of Weekend-break work cultures!!!
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Tags: Breaks, COmpany policies, Deadlines, Employees, Global economy, HR Managers, Leaves, Management, Office, Organizations, Planning, Productivity, Professional, Stress, Telecommute, Weekends, Weekly-offs, Work-life balance