The UK is top of the long hours table in Europe, with almost 4 million people working over 48 hours per week. However, working long hours can lead to stress, ill health and family problems. The European Working Time Directive has been implemented to protect employees from working excessively long hours, but there are other measures organisations can take to tackle the long hours culture. This article looks at why people work long hours, the impact this can have on individuals and organisations, and what strategies organisations can use to tackle the long hours culture.
Working Time Directive
The main requirements of the Working Time Directive are a maximum working week of 48 hours (averaged over a 17 week period), weekly rest periods of 24 hours and daily rest periods of 11 hours. It also states that employees should be guaranteed 20 days’ paid annual leave. At the moment employees in the UK have the right to agree with their employer to opt out of the 48-hour limit to work as many hours as they choose.
Reasons for working long hours
In order for employers to tackle the long hours culture in their organisation successfully, it is necessary for them to understand the reasons why people are working long hours. The main reasons can be broken down into two categories – organisational reasons and personal reasons.
Organisational reasons
Depleted workforce. Organisations may have fewer employees but expect more from those who remain. These employees may be unable to manage their work and achieve their targets in the time available, no matter how efficient they are.
Training can be an issue. People may not have been offered the appropriate training to help them manage their workloads productively.
Organisational culture. Some managers set an example by working long hours themselves, and expect their employees to do the same. In some organisations, working long hours can be regarded as a demonstration of commitment and people who do not work long hours may be criticised (openly or subtly).
Personal reasons
Enjoyment. Some people work long hours because they genuinely enjoy their work and take pride and satisfaction from using their skills.
Desire to enhance career prospects. This can be the case particularly in organisations that have established long hours as a path towards promotion.
Financial incentives. Some people may work excessive hours if they are under pressure to generate a bigger take home salary.
The job itself – employees may be having some difficulties in coping with certain aspects of their job, so they put in extra hours to compensate.
The impact of working long hours
1. On the individual.
Long hours can have a damaging effect on individuals. It can have an adverse impact on relationships, social and community activity by putting a strain on personal and home life. A downside for people who do not work long hours but are working in organisations that value long hours as a sign of commitment, is that they may find their career advancement opportunities greatly reduced.
Long hours may also affect people’s health and wellbeing to some extent, although it is quite difficult to attribute ill health directly to working hours. A review for the Health and Safety Executive in 2003 stated that: “There is some evidence that working long hours can lead to stress or mental ill health, although this is somewhat equivocal.”
2. On the organisation.
Long hours can also have a negative impact on organisations. Some organisations may take the view that working long hours is one way of getting the maximum benefit from limited resources. The consequences of this can include increased sickness absence as people suffer from stress, fatigue or ill health; and a decline in quality and productivity as people are unable to work to their best ability (again due to stress, fatigue or ill-health).
Stress, fatigue and ill-health can potentially lead employees to make serious mistakes in terms of health and safety, in the worst-case scenario endangering their own and/or others’ lives.
What organisations can do
Organisations need to find out why people are working long hours. Investigation into why people are struggling with their work; which parts of the organisation are having difficulty recruiting or retaining staff; which parts of the organisation suffer from chronic absenteeism (and the reasons behind this); and which parts of the organisation suffer from low morale are all good starting points. Once the reasons for the long hours culture has been established, organisations can then plan to combat it effectively.
The next step is to produce a plan that demonstrates how tackling long hours can help to improve individual and organisational performance. Encourage senior managers to support the plan by showing how long hours can be bad for the organisation (in terms of higher levels of absenteeism, higher staff turnover, loss of quality and productivity and low morale). With their backing, create an action plan with clear aims, and strategies for achieving those aims.
Strategies
The strategies should be on two levels – the first designed to change work patterns; the second directed at changing organisational and individual behaviour.
Some examples of how to change work patterns include: the introduction of flexible working, annualised hours, shift working or rota systems, job re-design and teleworking.
Examples of how to change individual and organisational behaviour include: provision of training programmes (time management, delegation, or job-related training); the introduction of ‘go home on time’ days; and a visible shift in the attitude and behaviour of managers, so that people do not feel that they will be criticised for not working long hours.
Once the plan is in place, it needs to be communicated and promoted so that the whole organisation is committed to it from the top down. However, changing people’s personal choices can be tricky, so support needs to be readily available to help those employees who have been working long hours as a result of personal issues.
Once the strategies have become embedded into the organisation, it is important to measure their success, to see if they have gone any way towards tackling the problem of long working hours. Establish links between improvements in organisational and individual performance and the strategies. Publicise these successes in order to promote the positive aspects of tackling the long hours culture and to sustain commitment to the strategies in the long term.
Reference:
European Commission, 'Working Conditions: Working Time Directive'. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intPageId=205
HSE, 'Working Long Hours'. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/hsl_pdf/2003/hsl03-02.pdf
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