Work Life Balance: Practical Approach or Skewed Outlook this?

I was having a discussion with the newly recruited HR head of an entrepreneur-founded company. The company is non-IT services company and has 6 day working, with a 10 to 6.30 working time. Leaving half an hour of lunch, it translates into 48 working hours per week.

The HR head was complaining that 48 working hours per week is too much and employees want work life balance, etc etc.

Just to play devils advocate, I put forward a calculation to him saying let’s look at work life balance by dividing the work hours and life hours.

So 10 to 6.30 every day makes it 8.5 hours per day. Half an hour is of lunch. Whether you work or not work, you have lunch. So let’s factor the lunch 30 minutes into life. So it comes to 8 work hours every day.

Let’s factor in the travel times and divide it equally between work and life. Assuming 2 hours of daily travel from home to work and back to home, we have 9 work hours every day, and 54 hours every week.

Now let’s look at the balance hours after 9 hours are taken by work. Assume 8 hours of sleep every day. That leaves 7 hours a day for life. Making it 42 hours per week. Since Sunday is left entirely to life, let’s add 16 hours here (leaving 8 of sleep). That makes it 58 hours per week for life. 8 hours of sleep daily makes it 56 hours of sleep per week.

Hence, in a six day work week, with 10am to 6.30pm working, we have 54 hours of work, 58 hours for life and 56 hours of sleep per week.

So as you can see, you are spending less hours at work than for sleeping and for your life. So where is the imbalance in work and life?

Is this a practical approach to look at work life balance, or is it a skewed outlook?

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