Working Long Hours

"Companies benefit when they discourage employees from working extra hours or taking work home. When employees spend their leisure time without ‘producing’ something for the job, they will be more focused and effective when they return to work."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

I completely agree with the expressed opinion.

The best of machines demand maintenance and care. Why should the human body be any different? The companies that discourage employees from working extra hours or taking work home  understand this fact very well. There is a limit to which any individual can do the same work continuously. After that fatigue sets in and productivity declines rapidly. If sustained over long periods of time, this can lead to a falling morale and deterioration in quality of work produced. It is much like a machine that can heat up if run continuously and can even break down if no break is given. And anybody can tell you that maintaining a machine is always less expensive than trying to fix it when it breaks!

Being a computer programmer, I can testify that in our team people working late hours, who are generally dead tired then, inadvertently produce a buggy code (code that fails to take care of all scenarios and produces errors when run). This often takes many hours of time to fix later. Hence, by discouraging people from working extra hours our engineering manager actually manages to increase productivity! It is a good example of why "extra work" can prove to be more harmful than useful in most cases. 

Rest refreshes the body and the mind. It also helps employees to maintain a better work - personal life balance. All this contributes to his happiness and health. This in turn ensures better performance when he works in the office. As many a human resource professional say, a happy employee is a productive employee.

Concluding, at the end of the day work is a part of life.Nevertheless, work is not the only thing in life as we are human beings and not robots. Every human being needs to "recharge his batteries" so as he can remain productive. Discouraging employees from working extra hours is, hence, a prudent decision that will go long way in ensuring happiness of the employees and the productivity of the company.