Why work-life balance matters (even in a startup)

ABOUT

In our recent State of Asian Startups 2020 survey, we asked our respondents how long their average daily working hours are. The results weren’t too surprising: Only 14.29% are happy working 11+ hours a day. Majority of the employees (61.90%) are neutral about it. On the other hand, founders clock in longer hours, but they feel OK about it. In fact, 41.77% of them said that working 11 hours or more every day “is good.”

WHY IT MATTERS

According to guidelines in Indonesia and Singapore, no one should be working for more than 8 hours and 9 hours a day, respectively. So if your startup is enforcing longer hours without overtime pay, you may be breaking the law.

In 2018, working people across all industries in Singapore put in 44.8 hours every week on average. That’s around 8.96 hours daily for a five-day work week, which is barely below the legal limit of 9 working hours per day.

Founders can cultivate a better work-life balance for their team by implementing a more flexible schedule and helping them focus on tasks that truly matter. Then everyone can work smart, instead of just blindly working hard. This idea was the focus of last year’s heated debate over China’s 996 work culture, which means being on the job from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week.

At the very least, weekends should be work-free. Our survey, however, shows that Asia’s tech community has a long way to go. Over 74% of respondents told us that they worked at least once over the weekend in the past month.

If you genuinely care for your people and want better employee retention, start helping your team members achieve work-life balance.

	Founders		Employees
Daily work hours	%	#	%	#
Below 6	6.34%	13	3.85%	18
7 – 8 hours	18.05%	37	41.97%	196
9 – 10 hours	37.07%	76	40.69%	190
11+ hours	38.54%	79	13.49%	63

	Founders		Employees

SOURCE