You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Advances in technology and automation have reduced the need for manual labour. Therefore working hours should be reduced. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer:
Work-life balance is a buzzword these days and a group of people think that offices should decrease the working hours. They express their view on the fact that automation and technological advancements enable employees to do more works per hour and hence their office hours should be reduced. This essay delves into the issue and expresses my viewpoint.
To begin with, technological advancements and computerisation in an office greatly enhance the productivity of people. As a result, the staff can produce more output and can perform more efficiently. For example, in the pre-computer era, a bank cashier had to work manually, check different ledger books, verify a person’s identity and then pay a customer. Moreover, at the end of the day, the cashier had to calculate all the transactions before he could leave the office alone with other cashiers. However, this is not longer the case with the automation in the banking industry. A cashier can now serve more than 3-5 customers in 15 minutes and at the end of the day, the banking software does the calculation. Hence, reducing the working hours seems quite logical to me.
Furthermore, motivating employees and retaining the key employees are two challenges every organisation faces in this competitive age. Reducing the working hours could be an effective solution in achieving better success in the long run. Since most of the employees, these days, perform more tasks due to the technological help they should be given more time to spend with their family to establish a healthy professional and personal life balance.
Finally, organisations which need to remain open 24/7 like the hospital, fire-service, hotel and so on should implement a rostering system and take advantages of the modern technology as much as possible to reduce the manual works. This would not only enhance their overall productivity but also establish a healthy and productive work environment.
To conclude, considering everything, I personally believe that the working hours of office employees should be reduced as it would both motivate staff and help organisations retain their better-performing employees and generate more output.