Jack Ma’s 996 Work Culture Has Always Been A Mantra To Swear By In The Indian Workforce

Jack Ma, co-founder of the wildly successful Ali Baba group, has been quoted saying on the matter of work timings as follows – “If we find things we like, 996 is not a problem. If you don’t like (your work), every minute is torture.” He continues, “I personally think that 996 is a huge blessing. How do you achieve the success you want without paying extra effort and time.”

It is an established fact that Indians work longer hours than most other places in the world, and thus, naturally concur with the above statement. This is especially true with regards to working class Indians who clock more overtime than is strictly required.

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According to a study conducted by the Swiss investment bank UBS, released last year in June – in Mumbai, employees work 3,315 hours a year on an average – ranking amongst some of the highest recorded working hours in the whole world. Not far in the competition, the capital city of India, Delhi, too has secured a fairly high position amongst the 77 other cities on the list for most number of working hours per year.

According to a survey conducted by TimesJob on what Indian workers think of long hours and working overtime the findings were as follows – 

On reasons for working overtime, 47% acclaimed it to work assigned at the last minute, 30% to on-going projects while 23% blamed it on other reasons. 65% of the employees who participated in the survey alleged that staying late is part of their office culture at their workplaces, while 84% of the participants denied being paid for the overtime they spend after designated office hours.

Religious in their dedication, besides clocking overtime hours, Indians go a step ahead and forsake vacation days as well. According to a survey by a US based workforce management firm Kronos, Indian workers rank five on a list workforces leaving their vacation days unused – only beaten by countries such as Japan, Australia, Italy, and New Zealand. Your regular working class Indian does not consider this a Herculean sacrifice to make, necessitating that as long as they get duly monetarily compensated for the extra hours of work they put in, they are more than happy to do so.

While the above holds quite true for working class Indians, some prominent businessmen of the country have expressed their objection to Ma’s statement on this apparently exhaustive regime of the 996 work culture. One of them tweeted in opposition of it, saying – ‘Respect for Jack Ma, but I feel spirit of innovation should be creativity and not #996 work culture. The age of undercutting through low wages, long working hours is over. Industrial revolution 4.0 is here and it’s about beating arbitrage through creativity.”

References:

• The Mumbai jobs case study that would’ve cut Jack Ma a lot of slack – Economic Times, 16 April 2019
• Indians have already been following Jack Ma’s advice on working hours – Niharika Sharma, 17 April 2019