An interesting article in the Times on the problems of overtime in the workplace.
"We’ve had extreme fishing, extreme skiing and even extreme ironing. Now, however, the TUC has found that almost a million workers are spending hours every week on an activity that may give them no pleasure and certainly no reward — extreme overtime.
More than five million professionals and managers in both the public and private sectors are working an average of seven hours a week without extra pay — and a million of them are working 48 hours a week or more, which the TUC classes as extreme.
According to the TUC’s analysis of official statistics, almost half of all lawyers report working unpaid overtime, with 18 per cent of them working more than ten hours a week of unpaid overtime. The average number of unpaid hours a week worked by legal professionals is 16. "
This illustrates some of the problems which clients of mine have experienced namely the pressure to do work.
We cannot hark back to the 1970 and 1980s and request going on strike. The reality is that the World is Flat ,and we are all in competition in the world. As a consequence the pressure is on the private and the public sectors.
Where do human resource and employment issues flow from here?
1 They need to deal with the legal duties such as complying with Health and Safety legislation and doing risk assessments.
2 They need to ensure that management sets a good example. On the one hand, the business needs to make money; on the other hand are management focusing so much on the bottom line to enable people to become stressed.
3 Monitoring of staff is key. Human resource professionals need to take a step back and look at staff, to see that they are not unduly stressed. Easy to say, more difficult to do.