You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
More and more people these days work harder and longer hours and have no time for family life and friends. What are the causes in your opinion for this? How is it affecting family life and the society as a whole?
Use relevant examples to support your view.
You should write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer 1:
In this highly competitive world, people have been spending a significant amount of time at their workplaces. It is true that most of the working people do not have social and family lives due to their hectic life. In this essay, I would like to discuss various aspects of the topic and try to reach a conclusion according to my perspective.
To commence with, in this globalised world, most of the companies and their workers have to face an international competition in the market which makes their work harder and tougher. To make it clear, it is evident that most of the international firms are technologically and ideally advanced so it has become necessary to work overtime with dedications to compete with those companies.
Furthermore, nowadays, daily expenses of a family has been rising day-by-day, such as the money spent on groceries, petroleum and so on. In this context, it is hard for a man to run a family with a single job or regular working hours so they are forced to work more. More importantly, unemployment has resulted in minimising wages of most of the works. To exemplify, in India, a nurse’s monthly salary is 100 dollar, it is impossible for them to live with this small amount and that’s why the nurse needs to work extra hours and even in days off to earn a bit more.
On the other hand, the platform of family life is interaction, socialisation and communication. When family members do not have enough time to interact each other, there will form a communication gap among them and that ultimately affect family relation. Moreover, as most of the people in a society over work and when they do not have sufficient time for interaction and exchange of ideas. It is evident that, unless the co-operation of society, there will not be an effective development in society.
To conclude, in my opinion, increased workforce and overtime have badly affected the social and family life of people. Even there are laws which say about minimum working hours of employees, many workers are forced to work over time. Hence, the government and authorities should take initiatives to come with a solution to this problem.
[ Written by – Tony Jose]
Sample Answer 2:
Nowadays, people are working harder than ever and have longer working hours. This kind of living has negatively affected their family and social life. There are several factors that cause the situation and the following essay will discuss them in details.
For a number of reasons, people in general work harder these days, as it can be seen from their long working hours. Firstly, it is due to the tough working competition these days. For a single job position, hundreds of people are competing and the private organisations are firing employees due to performance issue all the time. Further, as business has become more competitive, many companies have set a bigger target, a tighter budget and stricter deadlines. Consequently, the work volume has become higher and employees need to spend more time for completing their works. Secondly, it is believed that we are living in the materialistic and hedonic world nowadays. People are respected based on their assets, position and power and therefore a lot of people chose to focus on their career and work overtime.
As people choose to spend more hours in their workplace, it has negatively affected their family and social life. One of the cases is that many parents abandon their children as they are busy working. Some of the children feel ignored by their parents and this has a serious psychological effect, while other children become addicted to video games or even drugs. In another case, it is reported that long working hours have affected to the divorce rate. Many young couples chose to focus on their careers and have less time for their spouse. As a result, both of them lack the proper communication and relationship which are crucial for maintaining a happy and healthy relationship. Furthermore, the family tie is not as strong as it used to be and this is a serious issue that our society is facing these days. People have a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diets due to their busy corporate life. They have little time for exercise or outdoor activities and this is degrading the overall health of people.
In conclusion, it is true that people have become more ambitious with their careers these days, as they spend longer hours at work. On the one hand, I could understand the situation as business competition has become tighter and some people want to maintain their lifestyle. However, many people do not realise that it has some negative effects on their family and social life. Many of their children have become depressed and the divorce rate has increased rapidly in the past few years. Therefore I personally believe that we should have a balanced life between works and family.
[ Written by – Darwin Lesmana]