in many countries, people spend more time at workplace. Why? Is this a positive or development?

Many nations around the world are experiencing a phenomenon that employees are staying at their workplace longer than ever before. This is down to the invisibly harsh working competition at many levels, resulting in positive economic progress but serious problems to the staff themselves. It is undeniable that competitions are ubiquitous in modern economy, both within and outside companies. To achieve highest possible net profits, enterprises often try to cut down their investment, including the one for human resources. Limiting the number of employees means that each individual would have to do more tasks, leading to spending more time at their work place. In addition, contemporary corporations often pay extra compensation to those who work overtime with highly attractive rate, making many workers want to come home even later or give up weekend for their employers’ orders. This increasingly working trend is beneficial only for the economy, not for the labours. From an economic perspective, collective time-consuming tasks of individuals would lead to more economic activities being implemented in a larger social scale, ultimately bringing more prosperity for the society. On a personal level, however, that would damage workers’ physical and mental health in many unexpected ways such as causing sleep deprivation, stress or cardio-vascular diseases in the long term, according to many studies. Consequently, they would lose not only their own health but also productivity for which they are hired by enterprises. In conclusion, the roots of the issue of people spending more time at the workplace are the profit race between companies as well as employees’ desire of gaining salary as high as possible. This trend might sound like good news for the economy, but totally a hidden danger for these individuals in terms of health and prospective work progress.