One of the most interesting results of the Covid Pandemic has been a world-wide phenomenon called the “Great Resignation.” Despite the economic devastation brought about by Covid-19, the workers of the world have decided to quit their jobs and companies around the world are having problems recruiting. This phenomenon goes against every previous economic downturn, where people who had jobs hung onto them for dear life because having a job, even a badly paid one was better than not having a job at all.
In Singapore, this has been felt most keenly in the “professions,”
or the jobs that everyone used to aspire to. Young professionals, who spent
years studying for something that they believed would give them “instant
respect,” have decided to quit for other things which they’ve generally argued,
provide them with better work life balance and better mental health.
https://mothership.sg/2021/09/lawyer-auditor-banker-quit-mental-health/
One of the most affected professions was law. Survey
after survey showed that young lawyers had a common complaint – long hours,
which lead to burn out. More details can be found in the following story:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/lawyers-singapore-burn-out-great-resignation-wave-2453276
However, I can talk about my own relationship with
long-hours and having worked a few long nights in my past.
I would argue that in the initial stages of any given
career, one is bound to work long hours. It’s a case of, you’re starting out.
You have no idea what the job is about and you’re bound to make mistakes and be
“less productive” than your more seasoned colleagues. When I started out at the
age of 26 in 2001 for a small “fly-by-night” marketing communications firm, I
worked insanely long hours. My girlfriend at the time hated it because I wasn’t
in a job where I could knock of at six and then spend time with her.
Well, the girl friend had a point. I did burn out
after five months of 24/7 and being pushed to bring in revenue and so on.
Towards the end, I lost the ability to string a sentence together and to impress
clients I was servicing. I was told five months did not count as work
experience and labeled a “job-hopper” who couldn’t last in future job interviews.
Didn’t know how to tell people that the average lifespan in the job and place I
was in was around three weeks (inclusive of notice period) and five months
there was like five years everywhere else.
Interestingly enough, the “five-months” work
experience there gave me enough confidence to try and sell myself as a “PR
Consultant” (at that stage it was might as well go to the client direct to take
money rather than spend money looking for a job in an agency and waiting out
the month till you saw your next pay cheque).
So, whilst my PR stint was never a “career” in the
normal sense of the word, little me from nowhere was able to take on the big
guys and get results. I take great pride in the fact that I could get work from
big name clients without having stepped foot and been part of a team that
ultimately took orders from London or New York. However, I was able to do that
because I was happy to work the obscene hours in those early months of my
working life.
The reality is that working hard is a “given” in any
job. There are simply times where you got to do whatever it takes to get the
job done. You don’t worry about “work-life” balance because if you don’t do the
work spectacularly, you’re not going to get more of it, which will result in
you not having a life.
If you in a profession that by its nature is
confrontational, you should no further than Mr. Walter Silvester of SilvesterLegal LLC who says it best – “Do you want to win or do you want a work-life
balance?”
It was the same case when I joined the insolvency business. I’m not a trained lawyer or a trained accountant. However, I put in the hours and whilst I am by no means qualified to call myself an expert, I can hold my own as long as I don’t go into the details of legal acts and accounting practices. I can only do that because I had a step learning curve, which came from being willing to put in the time.
Having said what I’ve just said, one has to
distinguish between working long hours because it’s a necessity or whether its
simply unproductive. After three-years of doing anything, people should find themselves
working more “reasonable” hours because they’ve become better at their craft
and have found ways to do things in a more efficient manner. If someone
continues to work 24/7 after three-years, one has to question if that person is
either not learning or a genius for creating inefficiency.
There is working long hours because you need to
achieve an objective. My experience was Absolut Mandarin in 2002. Our little
agency slogged it out but we achieved something amazing when the Absolut client
expressed her delight with us. I think lawyers who work all day and night preparing
for a trial of a client they believe in and when they win, that victory is so
much sweeter (or as a lawyer who managed to get a trial heard in Singapore in a
situation where the case did not involve events in Singapore – “knowing you’ve
given your all and you managed in a year to hit a master swordsman who had twenty-years
to prepare).
Then there’s working like a dog for no particular
reason at all. Its as if you’re doing it because management has no clue about
what its doing but instead of coming down to the trenches to find out, they’re
sitting in the club house complaining the champagne isn’t cold enough because
you’re not fighting hard enough even though you’re currently taking on ten big
guys with your arm tied behind your back and the only thanks you’re getting is
a “f** you.”
I don’t believe that working long hours in itself is causing
the great resignation. I believe its other factors that put people off. In the “normal”
office people put up with all sorts of things because they accepted it as part
and parcel of “working.” However, when the pandemic hit and we had to work in a
different way, there was a realization that much of what went on in the old
work place was not actually work but self-destructive masturbation of the
pointless. Covid showed us that “normal” was in fact not normal and instead of
rushing back to impose a system that was clearly failing people.
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