news: work / life balance

The TUC has urged bosses not to score an own goal during the World Cup, and to allow staff who wish to watch televised games to do so, either away from work or if appropriate, somewhere on the company’s premises.

Rather than showing staff the red card for throwing ‘sickies’ in order to catch the games from South Africa, next month’s football tournament could be a perfect opportunity for employers to test out making more use of flexible working hours. Read more…

posted 27/05/2010

Being regularly stuck at your desk long after normal working hours can be a drag, no matter how much you love your job, and certainly doesn’t do much for your social or family life. But a new study shows that workers putting in too many extra hours in the office may be more likely to develop heart problems.
Read more…

posted 14/05/2010

Over five million workers across the UK gave away £27.4 billion in unpaid overtime in 2009, according to a TUC study of official statistics. This means that if everyone who worked unpaid overtime did it from the start of the year, they would start getting paid on Friday 26 February. We’ve declared this day Work Your Proper Hours Day 2010, and will be calling on bosses to thank staff for the extra work they are putting in to help businesses through the recession. Read more…

posted 02/02/2010

The TUC has calculated that 5.24 million people across the UK worked unpaid overtime in 2008, bringing its total value across the UK to a record £26.9 billion – the highest number since records began in 1992.

If you’re one of them, you might be missing out on extra £5,139 a year if you’d been paid for the additional 7 hours and 6 minutes that you’re on average putting in.

The biggest increases in unpaid overtime have taken place in London, the East Midlands and Eastern England. The South East and Scotland have been better at keeping up their work life balance though, with the number of people working unpaid overtime actually falling slightly.

If the average unpaid overtime worker did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would get paid would be Friday 27 February, which we call ‘Work Your Proper Hours Day‘ – a light-hearted awareness day for staff to work their proper hours for at least one day a year and for employers to thank their staff for regularly putting in all those extra hours at work.

But while some of this increase is due to the longs-hours culture that still dogs too many British workplaces, the recession will now be making many people scared of losing their job in the year ahead and joining the ever-growing dole-queue.

It’s understandable people are going to be putting in extra hours if they think it can help protect against redundancy or help keep their employer in business. But this doesn’t mean people should ignore excessive working.

Friday 27 February should still be used to think through working hours. Long hours are bad for people’s health, and employers should never forget that each extra hour worked makes people less productive once they’re over a sensible working week.

We think the recession should, if anything, provide a spur to make workplaces more productive, and for managers to get staff to work together more effectively, not just compete for who can stay the latest.

Find out more about Work Your Proper Hours Day 2009.

posted 08/01/2009

A senior car worker for Toyota died from working too much overtime a Japanese labour bureau has found.

The 45 year old man was one of Toyotas most senior engineers and had been working on a new hybrid car at the time of his death.

Having worked on average more the 80 hours of overtime a month in the two months preceding his death, regularly worked nights and weekends and travelled extensively overseas, the man was found dead in his Tokyo home from ischaemia the day before the car was to be premiered at a show in Detroit.

Japan has one of the worst records for long working hours and last year there were 142 documented cases of “karoshi” – death from excessive work

Read more at the Guardian: Senior Toyota engineer died of overwork

posted 10/07/2008