RThere’s nothing like a good work meeting on Saturday morning to stay focused on your company’s objectives. At least that’s what the leaders of the chaebol (large conglomerate) SK Group believe. Twenty-five years after adopting the five-day week, society comes, according to the Korea Timesto decide to resume its tradition of a meeting every other Saturday for its senior executives.
Following suit, its rival Samsung has just decreed that, from now on, its managers must work six days a week. Emotion, even in this country accustomed to working hard, because, as the newspaper points out, everyone at their level anticipates the additional pressure that will fall on employees when their bosses are active on weekends.
The chaebols of the Land of Morning Calm are not the only ones wanting to add to their schedules. In China, star technology companies like Baidu and Tencent are familiar with “996,” which means working from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week. In both countries, the urgency of ever-increasing competition and more difficult financial performance is cited.
“Curse of the 35”
Seen from Europe, where the predominant debate today revolves around the four-day week (at least presence in the office), this laborious frenzy is enough to make one dizzy. Especially since, in these countries at the forefront of demographic decline, a second phenomenon reinforces the first: the hunt for young people.
In China, as told by Financial Times, employees at big tech companies face what they call “the curse of 35.” After 35, you are old, less hard-working, responsible for family, and therefore likely to be replaced. In 2019, Tencent launched a major plan to replace 10% of its staff with juniors in their twenties. At ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, or at Pinduoduo (e-commerce), the average age is 27 years old.
As a result, very young seniors aged 35 to 40 find it more difficult to find work and must agree to work in SMEs at lower salaries. As the Korean media Aju Press points out, those over 50 represent 48% of employees in small businesses. At a time when we are wondering about the propensity of 20-30 year olds to engage less in work, and when all countries are in the process of pushing back the retirement age, the demographic revolution ongoing has continued to disrupt our economies and societies.