Aug

6

Overwork?

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An interesting peace of research released by the Families and Work Institute reports on overwork in America, looking at the findings it seems to me that problem is widespread. The goal of the study was “to better identify how the ways we work today and how we prioritize our lives on and off the job are related to being overworked.” According to the study, 1 in 3 American’s experienced the feeling of being chronically overworked, this is an issue because overwork affects us in the following ways:

  • Increased mistakes.
  • Increased stress levels, negatively affecting our health.
  • Increased occurrences of clinical depression.
  • Are more likely to report that our health is poorer.
  • Are more likely to neglect caring for ourselves.
  • Employees are more likely to experience anger towards their employer.
  • Employees are more likely to resent others who don’t work as hard as they do.

The feeling of being overworked is strongly influenced by the way we work, by factors such as:

  • Lack of focus - too much multi-tasking and too many interruptions.
  • Increased job pressure.
  • Low-value work - working on things that are a “waste of time”.
  • Accessibility - 24/7 contact and working outside of normal working hours.
  • Working while on vacation.

The findings suggest that organisation’s need to reconsider the way work gets done!

A useful analogy is competitive sports where it is well known that periods of recovery need to be interspersed within periods of pushing hard.

Suggested strategies cited in the report are:

  • Focus. There should be a balance between times when employees can concentrate on the task at hand and when they are multi-tasking and being interrupted. Work teams need to set the parameters. For example, some work teams have set aside times during the day when employees do not interrupt each other.
  • Job pressure. Again, there should be a balance between the kind of pressure that energizes employees and fosters the development of new competencies and the kind of pressure that depletes them. Setting more realistic deadlines may be part of the solution as some employers have discovered.
  • Low-value work. Work teams need to discuss and define the work they do that is high-priority and the work they do that is low-value. Then they can find ways to either drop or change the low-value work so that the time and energy they spend at work is more efficient.
  • Accessibility. Work teams need to discuss how accessible to one another they need to be to each other outside normal work hours and set parameters around when it is important to contact each other and when it isn’t.
  • Working while on vacation. Employers should encourage their employees to take their vacations and to take them in longer stretches if possible. Employers and employees need to be made aware of the possible disadvantages of working on vacation and the importance of having vacations serve their central purpose of providing time for employees to rest and recharge their batteries.

The full report has to be purchased, however an Executive Summary is available here.

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