A Chartered Management Institute (CMI) survey suggests Britain's long-hours culture is creating burnout among senior staff, 90% of whom work longer than their contracted hours. Is there any way to reverse the trend?

Employers that allow senior staff to work too many extra hours are damaging morale, productivity and limiting the opportunity for employees to develop their skills, according to the CMI.

A CMI survey of 1,511 senior staff found that:

• 45% said that the UK’s long hours culture affected their productivity
• 40% felt that working long hours lowered morale
• 48% claimed extra hours prevented them from developing skills.

On average, managers at UK firms work an extra 40 days a year in order to deal with their workload. Almost 55% said it was mostly in order to meet deadlines or because of the volume of work they had. In addition, nine out of 10 managers said they work longer than their contracted hours by an average of one hour and 18 minutes a day.

According to CMI calculations, if employees worked all their unpaid overtime from the start of the year, February 22 would be the first day they would be paid.

Of those surveyed by the CMI, 2% said they were pressured by their bosses to work extra hours to meet workloads. The report also found that 16% of women, compared with 35% of men, work more than 48 hours each week.

“The perpetual cycle of taking out costs in recent years has meant that most organisations are driven to use their assets – particularly their people – more intensively. Yet it is clearly having a negative effect and will create longer-term problems for organisations, unless the UK’s long hours culture is kept in check,” commented Jo Causon, the CMI’s director of marketing and corporate affairs.

What you can do

There is no single reason why senior staff are working longer hours than is healthy, and each organisation will have to identify and address its own issues. However, there are a variety of approaches you can adopt to make it easier for your staff to spend fewer, but more productive, hours at work.

• Take the benchmarking questionnaire on the The Work Foundation’s Employers and work-life balance website. This will help you assess whether your staff are working excessively long hours and recommend ways to improve this.

• Use your appraisal system to identify which employees are habitually working long hours and uncover the reasons why. Is it because they have too few resources? Are they expected to achieve too much? Have they been under-prepared for their role? Is there pressure to conform to a long-hours culture in your workplace?

• Helping staff prepare personal development plans gives you the means to address some of the issues you uncover through appraisals. Realistic objectives supported by training, feedback, appraisals and targeted resources will help staff improve performance gradually and without feeling the need to flog themselves.

• More employees are being given the right to request flexible working. Look at such requests in a positive light – and be prepared to consider requests from a wider pool of staff than you are required to by law.

• Offer a range of flexible working patterns. Flexible working is not just working from home – it could be part-time working, job-sharing, annualised hours, and so on.

• Enable employees to take extended time off. This might include sabbaticals, generous parental leave, time off in lieu, and so on.

• Read the CIPD factsheet for more thoughts on work-life balance.

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