996 Culture Is Trembling, But Is Work-life Balance Dream Still Living?

Welcome to the latest installment of This Week In China, a bi-weekly newsletter talking about the hottest buzz in the workplace, and business mainly comes from China, one of the most dynamic and fast-evolving economies. We will talk about the future of work and the future of business alongside the most note-worthy anecdotes from the Chinese community. Please subscribe to the newsletter so you won't miss out!

"The small-big week is gone!" In the afternoon of July 9, the boots officially landed, and ByteDance announced that it would cancel the arrangement of working on alternate Sundays from August 1, which is commonly known as "small and big week". Previously, on June 17, ByteDance published a report at an internal open day, showing that one-third of the company's employees opposed the abolition of the "small and big week" work system, which means working six days a week and five days the next.

Once the news came out, t the Internet circle is buzzing. According to a number of media outlets, the cancellation of the small-big week has been one of the biggest concerns of ByteDance employees. Working at ByteDance doesn't require a clocking-in, but overtime is the norm, and although employees need to report to their leaders for overtime approval, they are rewarded double for working on Saturday and Sunday. "Some people work overtime for one day and earn several thousand RMB," said a headhunter familiar with ByteDance. Some employees said, "I earned a month's rent for two days of overtime, so why not?"

As a comparison, Kuaishou, TikTok’s domestic rival, also officially abolished the "small-big week" work system from July 1. And earlier, Tencent's Lightspeed & Quantum Studios Group announced the establishment of a Wednesday "health day" from June 14, on which employees are required to leave work at 6 p.m. that day, and no later than 9 p.m. on the rest of the working days.

In one of my polls, I asked LinkedIn if people would be willing to work overtime for a very high level of extra income. From the results, 53% of users in the Chinese community said yes and 42% said no, while 47% of users in the English community said yes to the idea and 49% refused.

(Well, one world, one value)

I briefly summarized the voices of the two sides.

Supportive:

• Paid to touch the fish (slack during work), why not ??
• Let's understand Maslow's theory of motivation and apply it to your question: if money is the driver of motivation for work, then yes, this mostly applies in China.

Against：

For ByteDance employees, eliminating small-big weeks but not reducing workload is actually a pay cut in disguise.

• How can we regress to the ancient historical stage of free negotiation between employers and employees, in a time that workers' working hours should be governed by law?
• The value of working overtime for money is unsustainable. When you are young, you may be able to carry it, you can sacrifice time for money, but you overspend your health; you have time to make money and no time to spend it, which means that money does not belong to you! Why don’t we just invest the time after work on things you love? Why not invest more time in your own and your family?
• In order to complete the work, it is normal to work overtime occasionally, but over time all year round, it’s either the company or the employees are sick, or both......for all the overtimes, half is from the employees in order to compensate for their inefficiency in normal working hours, disguised as overtime pay. The other half is the unscrupulous enterprises to exploit labor, 3 people to work on 5 people’s jobs. Your income seems to be higher, but at what cost?

Interestingly, while most of the opinions in the comment oppose the use of money for overtime (and the corresponding time, energy, and health), more than half of the members who voted (both domestic and foreign) seem to be more realistic: as long as they don't "exploit" for free, the deal still looks like a good one. I can't help but speculate whether the one-third of ByteDance people who didn't take a stand during the internal survey is, like most people, torn between a comfortable and balanced work experience and financial benefits.

To overtime or not to overtime, that is a question or a choice?

Rex, who works in real estate consulting, told me that overtime is very common in his industry, and his HR department basically works overtime four days a week, "after all, the point of HR overtime is to try to keep the business from working overtime".? Mostly caused by business cases, but the company does not have a widespread culture of overtime. "Complete the work that is meaningful, the formation of culture is not necessary." And he personally expressed surprise at the Internet company's abandoning of 996 culture, "which should not exist in itself anyway".

Some people outside of the industry expressed their indifference. Mr. Qu, who is engaged in the consumer electronics and lithium battery manufacturing industry, told me that according to the standard of the manufacturing industry, it is not considered overtime to leave work before 10 p.m. every day. Mr. Qu, who overtimes six days a week, believes that Internet employees should stop fussing, "compared with the manufacturing industry, IT and Internet folks just don’t know how good their lives are. "The moon at 1:00 a.m. is not very pretty, and the haze at 4:30 a.m. is the most beautiful. Looking at the more positive side can reduce your negative emotions. The other way will not help." He said.

What exactly is the experience of overtime in ByteDance? Only the insiders know. I talked with a friend, Mr. X, who joined the company about six months ago. He said that when he first arrived at ByteDance, his experience of the small-big weeks was "inefficient". "The working hours are definitely longer, but not necessarily more efficient. Relatively speaking, the greater impact on the workload is the overtime during weekdays".

He said that the small-big weeks had a very negative impact on his own rhythm of life, and even led to emotional depression and a sense of boredom with work. He observed that when he works overtime on Sundays, people are looser and leave work earlier. "I'm a little better with my managerial role, but people on the front line are likely to be less motivated to work on Sundays."

International overtimers, united!

Through the poll, I also talked to some people outside of China about their views on overtime.

Prarthana, an Indian member who works in online education, told me, "Last year we worked overtime for a whole month because it was the peak time for admissions to major colleges and universities in the U.K. and U.S., and we received a lot of requests to edit essays."

Since dissertation editing is billed on a per-paper basis at $1 each, which is not ideal compensation, "my attitude toward overtime is that it's fine as long as I get paid for it. And it has become the norm for Indian employers to basically expect their employees to work beyond normal business hours." However, Prarthana isn't any better off if it comes to forced unpaid overtime, "After all, I'm worried about being seen by my boss as inefficient or even being fired."

Prarthana says, "Indian law also has a provision for double pay for overtime hours, and an employee can only work a maximum of 9 hours in a 12-hour shift and must be paid double for the excess." However, "70% of my colleagues work two to three hours of overtime every day, and it is not uncommon to see them work until midnight when there is a lot of revision and writing work at hand during peak business seasons. Overtime compensation is very rare. Holiday work is also common."

Kevin, a marketing practitioner who has worked in Shanghai and Beijing for many years, has been employed by a number of companies and is now running his own business, "so I speak with experience from both sides.". He says that irregular working hours are a common thing, as they have limited production time but strict deadlines, and he's doing everything he can as an employer and employee to balance work and life. "Working OT is not ideal, but unfortunately inevitable in a highly time-sensitive industry and city like Shanghai.? I know many of my counterparts in Europe that are more mindful of OT, but even they are not exempt from this practice, so I would say it's industry practice"

There is room for improvement in the status quo.

"Being in the service industry, I think this can be better mitigated if the industry as a whole educates the buy client-side to better respect and plan their time, at the risk of higher cost if they fail to do so."

But for China's "world-famed" Internet industry overtime norm, "I can understand how it might be hard to find that balance, as they're always competing with someone else that's willing to work longer to get their product out faster"

Choong, who is based in Singapore, believes that the fact that some Internet companies are starting to change their 996 and "small-big week" work schedule is "a good initiative and I am happy to see that. It shows that Chinese Internet and Tech companies have evolved over the years and starting to reach a stage where they do not solely depend on a massive production style to build the products for their business, but more towards treating their employees as assets and concerning about their well-beings in a way to build up an innovative and work-life balance culture so that they can work well and continue to build great products."

If you can’t escape, imagine a future and wait for its realization?

Of course, everything has just begun: it remains to be seen how the new policy of ByteDance will be implemented; according to a friend within Kuaishou, he has been working for 25 days without time off despite the cancellation of the "small-big week"; and at Alibaba, the "birthplace" of 996 culture, people are said to have a lukewarm response to the change of ByteDance, while employees of other Internet companies are even less enthusiastic about the prospect of an immediate change.

During a brief written interview with me, Martin Roll, a veteran business strategy consultant, and a leadership and transformation expert said :

“the current discussion about overtime is somehow flawed as it relates only to the number of hours. Instead, the real issue is about the working culture that companies want to nurture as a competitive edge to attract and maintain talents (and they are scare in supply)”.

He is optimistic that the changes taking place at Chinese Internet companies are a good development and initiative, "As productivity gains continue to change business processes, companies can easily structure work differently, and at the same time use the elimination of overtime to build stronger working cultures that provide better work-life balance."

The aforementioned Mr. X said he supports the elimination of the "small-big week" but understands his colleagues who oppose it, "After all, people need the money so much." But he also pointed out, "I don't think the 'freedom to work overtime' is a 'free choice' that should be recognized and supported on any level of law or morality."

"One of the things Luo Xiang (a famous Chinese professor of law well-known for his effort on law education to the mass public) said when speaking about the case of organ trading is that as individuals, we do not have the right to dispose of all of our bodies, otherwise it will inevitably lead to the exploitation of the weak by the strong. In this case, it is the exploitation of labor by the managers, such as the endless 'endeavor’s agreements' where the only way to get a promotion is to voluntarily give up overtime pay."

“The liberty to dispose of your own body is like the liberty to work overtime. It’s the disguise of exploitation. But you should remember that you also have the liberty from exploitation.” Mr. X emphasized.

He believes that "the liberty to work overtime" should not be allowed at all. So why should Internet companies, which have profited so much from the "overtime bonus," start to shake up this foundation? "It's because everyone has entered the second half of the competition, and purely by piling up time can no longer get any results." So says Mr. X.

A new article by Sean Ye, a LinkedIn Top Voice and a veteran HR practitioner, echoes this sentiment. He observes that HRs at many companies are reflecting on whether 996 culture can help companies improve efficiency and whether it can be "sustainable". "The regular overtime is often companied with little meaningful work to do, but the bosses are anxious. So employees pay the price of time to relieve their anxiety, so many people are wasting time and slacking at work, waiting to get paid. "

"For fast-growing Internet companies, there is indeed a very realistic point: the space for growth is getting smaller. The giants are taking advantage of their huge size to eat up the market space, but the bulk of the market is taken up, with so little new traffic out there to battle for."

Sean believes that the Internet will still grow in the future, but before new growth space is tapped, the Internet companies that can win are no longer the ones who saught wild and rapid growth. It’s the ones that are good at fine-tuning operations.

And Martin suggests that ordinary working people look at the overtime problem from a different perspective. "Overtime is somehow related to the career life journey and should be viewed in that light to create clarity. When you are younger, you want to establish your career track by learning as much as you can, load up on experiences and be part of exciting work with great teams. Curiosity and learning from others are huge parts of drive and motivation. At times this means many hours spent at work. When you start to progress, the essentials of this continue (as you always need to learn), but you also broaden commitments with family and want to allocate meaningful time outside the workplace. Your type of work also tends to change over the career life span, and overtime plays a different role."

So ...... everything will slowly get better, it's just a matter of time and stage of development, right?

What else do you want to say about overtime and liberty to choose? Feel free to comment. The newsletter is still in the process of improvement. Feel free to send me a private message about a topic you care about, and maybe it will be the topic of the next #TWIC.

See you next time!

Special thanks to: Rex CHEN，William Li，曲鋆，Kevin Lim，Supriyo M.?，Choong Eng CHUAH, Benson Gao, Prarthana Barua, Aniket Kshatriya, Mr. X, and Martin Roll.