Can longer work hour policies and cyberloafing go hand in hand?

Increased boundarylessness can lead to counterproductive work behaviours, the most prevalent being cyberloafing. With monitoring a virtual workforce already being a challenge, managing the nuances of cyberloafing is another addition

  • Published:
  • 08/04/2025 01:52 PM

The absence of work and home boundaries, which has become the new normal in the wake of the pandemic, is putting enormous pressure on me to be available 24/7. Image: Shutterstock

Anamika, a young software engineer, jokingly told her HR in a casual connection that flexible working has become a bane rather than a boon. "I am expected to be available to pick up calls at even nine at night, though my work day ends at seven. Work from the office had a boundary to work hours. When working from the office, I was at least not disturbed once I left in the evening. Now I feel I am never offline putting undue pressure on my bandwidth for absolutely no extra pay or recognition". Similar is the experience of Saket, a team lead from the same company. "The absence of work and home boundaries, which has become the new normal in the wake of the pandemic, is putting enormous pressure on me to be available 24/7. Being the team lead only worsens the situation since I need to be present to set the expectations right". These are only two of the experiences. However, a lot of the other IT/ITes employees across organisations in India echo the same sentiment.

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Countries like Britain, Germany and several others in the EU have been experimenting with a 4-day work week, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, and this has sparked discussions about increased workplace flexibility and benefits. The US also has seen demands being raised to reduce the working hours from 40 hours a week to 32 hours. These countries are realising the importance of increased flexibility demands of workers and seeing increased or stable productivity, performance, reduced stress, improved job satisfaction and overall well-being after implementing a compressed work week. A contrary example is Greece, which has implemented a voluntary 6-day work week to meet the increasing business demands and skilled labour shortages. Ironically, Greece already had the longest average work week in the European Union last year(39.8 hours compared to 36.1 hours of the EU), while its productivity was a whopping 30 percent lower than other EU countries. Another example is from India, where certain states like Karnataka want to increase work hours in the hopes of increasing productivity.

Looking at the case of India and particularly the Karnataka government's proposed amendment to the Factories and Establishments Act 1948 to increase the work time to 14 hours in a day (nine hours of regular work plus three hours of overtime and two hours of rest/intervals) shows the indiscriminate intrusion of work into personal time in the name of increasing productivity. A recent report from the Knowledge Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI) reveals alarming trends in the IT sector. It shows that 45 percent of IT professionals are grappling with mental health issues, including depression, while 55 percent are experiencing adverse physical health effects. The situation is set to deteriorate further with extended working hours. According to the report, half of India's IT workforce puts in more than 9 hours a day, resulting in an average of 52.5 hours per week. With a majority of IT/ITes and financial services organisations moving to either complete remote or hybrid mode of working, these increased working hours need to be viewed from this changing landscape of where work is getting done. Policymakers and organisations alike should think about whether the intended benefits will be reaped by implementing this policy.

With flexible work arrangements and even complete remote work being the new norm, these increased work hours can lead to further blurring of work-life boundaries, increased stress, mental exhaustion, and burnout, and, in turn, reduced productivity. Blurring mental and temporal boundaries leads to a loss of constraint on the amount of work that is entrusted to the employees, and there is an implicit expectation to be available almost 24/7. As Anamika and Saket mentioned above, employees can't really "switch off" from work.

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The most affected groups are the employees with special needs, which include women with childcare responsibilities and others who are in caregiving roles at home. Owing to the traditional gendered norms at home, women are already responsible for a higher proportion of domestic workload along with demanding work responsibilities. Increased working hours add to their woes and have a counterintuitive impact of reduced productivity due to being stretched continuously in different directions without being able to do justice to either of their roles. Similar is the case with employees having elderly childcare responsibilities. Employees then compensate by working odd hours outside of the stipulated work time to meet the deadlines, effectively leading to them working anytime and all the time.

This increased boundarylessness can lead to counterproductive work behaviours, the most prevalent being cyberloafing. Cyberloafing is when employees use work time and resources for personal work, including checking personal emails and surfing the internet. Several studies show that employees spend significant time cyberloafing, with one study putting the number at 60 to 80 percent. Recent research on cyberloafing has shown that the major reason for this negative work behaviour is increased workload and unrealistic job expectations, which lead to lower self-efficacy and low job satisfaction. This leads to employees distracting themselves momentarily by engaging in non-work-related activities to reduce their stress and mental exhaustion and escape the feeling of not being good enough to complete the task at hand.

What happens when these two alarming trends meet each other?

A counterargument to cyberloafing is that when employees are expected to be available 24/7 due to the increased boundarylessness, it becomes necessary to unwind and find pockets of time to release the stress. Employees can rationalise cyberloafing as a response to the organisation's implicit pressure to remain constantly available. That way, can small amounts of cyberloafing be justified in lieu of increased working hours and boundarylessness? Organisations that continue to see flexible working as a perk offered to employees and expect increased productivity and uninterrupted availability should be ready to tolerate considerable amounts of cyberloafing.

Organisations may then encounter an impending question: How much cyberloafing should be acceptable? More importantly, how can organisations ensure that employees are not exceeding these set limits? With monitoring a virtual workforce already being a challenge, managing the nuances of cyberloafing while away from the office will burden the organisations. 

This issue needs to be researched further before countries and organisations that are already grappling with managing a remote workforce implement increased working hours in hopes of improving productivity and business performance.

Aparna Varma, Doctoral Scholar, IIM Kozhikode

Nivedhitha K S,  Assistant Professor, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Area, IIM Kozhikode.

Last Updated :

April 08, 25 02:19:57 PM IST