Introduction
I've always worked in the (IT) private sector since graduating from college, as opposed to the majority who prefer to go for government jobs, as they work less hours and have a guaranteed position/job. Working in the private sector is rewarding, but exhausting. 9 AM - 6 PM, or longer, depending on the projects at hand and time of year. There's little time for personal recreation after work, and the weekend is mostly spent on sleep to recoup from the exhausting work-week or running personal errands. No time for personal hobbies or skill growth in non-work related subjects.
Why stay in private sector then? The pay is higher. Much higher. If one does manage to grow their skillset to be of unique coverage, many doors open and with that, high compensation comes along. There's still little time for personal hobbies, unfortunately.
This post is just a thought that came to mind on creating balance, from someone like myself who gets burnt-out from work every now & then and it's difficult to try many things of what I want to do in life, other than work, such as learning diving, visiting museums (they close in weekends here), and other things on my growing list of things I don't have time for.
Conceptual Corporate Work Options
I had the thought that assuming I run my own business & have employees, I'd give the following options:
- Employee gets full salary.
Works 9 AM to 5 PM (8 hours a day, 40 hours a week). - Employee gets 20% of salary deducted & it's put into a corporate-managed investment fund. The company takes 25% of profits as management fees.
Works 9 AM to 5 PM (8 hours a day, 40 hours a week). - Employee gets 20% of salary deducted & it's put into a corporate-managed investment fund. The company takes 40% of profits as management fees.
Works 9 AM to 2 PM (5 hours a day, 25 hours a week).
- Each employee gets the choice of time vs money, and having an investment option available for those not savvy enough to do it on their own (banks here are terrible in such options).
- Not rely on country-owned pension funds that cap the retirement salary & usually not enough to fight inflation by the time of retirement.
- Option 3 would provide the employees the luxury of extra time per day, reducing burn out episodes, increasing productivity, and forces the corporate & the investment fund to choose the right investments to maximize profits to hire more people to compensate for the needed time to finish tasks/projects.
Employee and Corporate Restrictions
- All employees, including management, are limited to withdraw a maximum of 20% of investment per year, to guarantee stability of investment fund.
- Employees will take 100% of their investment when leaving the company (fired or quitting).
- The investment fund must be operated by certified investors, or an investment company, and all withdrawals, partial or full employee exit ones, must be approved and audited by the government to prevent theft or manipulation.
- Corporate cannot withdraw or touch the fund without full disclosure to all employees.
- Corporate management does not receive incentives nor bonuses from the fund. It's purely voluntary for employees to join the fund (out of the work options above).
- The corporate's profit cut is fed back into the fund and is owned by the shareholders of the corporate (if a publicly listed company) or the founders (if privately owned). The same 20% cap applies on withdrawing any profits from the fund.
- Work options 2 & 3 encourage employees to stay longer in the company, as their investment profits would grow larger with time.
Kuwait suffers from people who frequently hop between jobs, because Human Resources (HR) here have a practice of increasing an applicant's salary by 5-10% based on their previous job's salary, not part of a package dedicated to the available job function! This results in having employees jumping from one company to another every 1-2 years to keep getting a raise, as the companies don't increase employee salaries often (sometimes not at all for 10 years!).
