Ways to handle long working hours

During times of recession and economic downturn, it is observed that most of the employees opted for working long hours to stay in their job and deal with work pressure which results in anxiety, stress, health related issues, troubled social or family life and difficulty to maintain focus. Sometimes employees especially managers become too comfortable with late sitting that they start designing their work schedule around those hours and start considering those late working hours as power working hours. Others on their team may not be comfortable doing work that late on daily basis but start pretending to work to stay in that league or to please their bosses or to become a part of that culture.

As mentioned in HBR article titled “The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies” There’s a large body of research that suggests that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us. Therefore, it’s important for organization to intervene from time to time to make employees conscious of the fact so that they can dare to ask themselves “Does it work?” Is overwork actually doing what we assume it does — resulting in more and better output? Are we actually getting more done?

However, some believe it’s the role of HR only to create work life balance but managers also play a crucial role in making sure how to work together to reinforce a culture that promotes employee well-being. If managers keep justifying the need of working for prolonged hours then nothing could be done.

Therefore, managers should sit with their team mates to amicably come up with a solution as productivity of the organization depends on the employee well-being. Even a machine can’t work beyond its capacity then how come we expect people to work in that manner.

Some of the ways to deal with this issue includes:

·        Discuss openly with your team members about the workload problems

·        Make employees accountable for managing their time.

·        Keep the meetings limited to productive discussion.

·        Don’t agree to unachievable deadlines. Discuss it with your team members before giving consent.

·        Create a culture where employees feel encouraged to help others

·        Mutually agree to home going time to balance work-life.