996 culture: Tencent-owned company offers employees a break, but with a catch
- A gaming studio under Tencent has introduced ‘Wednesday Health Day’, encouraging employees to go home at 6pm one day a week
- Chinese media and internet users have often attributed reports of premature deaths of young tech workers to punishing workloads
The move by Lightspeed & Quantum Studios, which also developed the patriotic Chinese title Game for Peace, has been criticised on social media because it hardly makes a dent in China’s tech industry culture of working 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
A screenshot of the new announcement appeared on the Twitter-like social platform Weibo on Friday, informing employees at the Tencent Games subsidiary of a new policy called “Wednesday Health Day”.
Employees were invited to clock off at 6pm on Wednesdays only. Overtime work during the rest of the week was still allowed, but only up to 9pm.
Under the change, workers were guaranteed weekends off. If they are required to work Saturdays or Sundays to finish urgent projects, management needs to justify the request. The announcement also said employees are not allowed to work overtime for two consecutive days.
Tencent’s Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG), which includes Tencent Games, confirmed to state media outlet The Paper on Friday that the gaming company introduced the measures to encourage its employees to seek a healthy work-life balance, spend more time with their families, and to improve work efficiency.