My colleague Ben Moss recently wrote an article for the Public Servant Magazine’s Management Clinic discussing the latest research findings reported by TUC who have estimated that 5.24 million people in the UK put in extra work worth a staggering £26.9bn during 2008. This equates to each employee missing out on an average of £5000 of pay per year – a lot of money by any standards, especially in these times!
Obviously the amount of overtime worked is at the discretion of each employee and depends both on how much people need the extra money and how committed they are to the business. But at a time when jobs are on the line and the threat of redundancy hangs in the air, I wonder whether employees are simply putting in more and more face time to look committed and indispensable, rather than working at their full potential.
I think a lot of employees will be tempted to do just that – putting in more hours to show their bosses that they’re working hard in the hope that this extra effort and commitment will be noted and their jobs will remain secure if the company has to reduce the size of its workforce. But paradoxically these extra hours can actually have negative consequences for the business over time, because when a person works over a sensible amount of hours they actually become less productive and the extra input is potentially wasted. That’s ‘Presenteeism’!
Striking the right balance of working extra hours is both the employer’s and the employee’s responsibility. Employees have to think carefully about why they’re staying late – is it because they have an important deadline to meet or because they feel their livelihood is at risk? And employers also have a responsibility to help their people feel secure by clearly communicating what’s expected from them, while guarding against perennial work overload at the expense of productivity.
It’s great if a company can create a culture where employees, when necessary, are flexible enough to work longer hours to get the job done. It shows employees are committed to the goals and success of the business, but as Ben says in his article employers and their employees must remember that “presence does not equal productivity”.
Read Ben’s full article at my University Spin off company’s website http://www.robertsoncooper.com/Resources/documents/PublicServant-Feb2009.pdf
I couldn’t agree more. Recently, I was forced to work extra hours because my company doesn’t understand the importance of time away from work nor deadlines. Having to work late into the night to complete a last minute project for our VP left me feeling disgruntled. The next day at work, I was extremely unproductive. Although I was at my desk, pretending work, I barely accomplished any real work.
It happens to my boss as well. He works late hours and travels often. When he returns from work-related trips at which he’s forced to work extended hours, I often find him surfing the internet, trimming his nails, taking long lunch breaks and spending company money on personal items.
In essence, working late hours does not equate productivity or palpable gain for the company. From personal experience, longer hours do not benefit the workplace.