With many employers and staff agreeing to reduce hours in order to avoid job losses, it seems the reduction in working time has had a knock on effect on the number of people working paid and unpaid overtime. So whilst this is a record value for unpaid overtime, the number of people doing it is actually down by 168,000 on last year, meaning the 5.07m remaining are putting in even longer hours.

The TUC’s Brendan Barber said:

‘The recession has forced many employees to do less hours in an effort to save jobs and this has also had an effect on the amount of unpaid overtime worked. This flexibility and the sacrifices made by staff has saved jobs and kept companies afloat. Bosses should use Work Your Proper Hours Day to thank staff for the extra effort they are putting in to help their business through the recession.

‘But millions of people are still working far too many hours and often they are not even being paid for it. This long hours culture causes stress and damages people’s health. Most employers are understandably focused on fighting their way through the recession. But they shouldn’t forget that working cultures such as pointless presenteeism – which keeps people at their desks for no good reason – is not just bad for staff but bad for business too.’

You can find out more about Work Your Proper Hours Day 2010 at www.workyourproperhoursday.com

By allowing staff to loosen their ties and leave their jackets at home, the TUC is hoping most employers will adopt a more relaxed approach to office attire, if only for the hottest days of the summer, and help make work a bit more bearable.

Often the best way for staff to keep cool inside when it’s swelteringly hot outside is for them to sport less formal, more casual clothing, and come into work in shirt sleeves and shorts. Casual dress makes business sense too. Employers who provide their staff with a cool and comfortable work environment are going to get more out of them when it’s hot. If you can’t dress down into more appropriate summer clothing, or if you work in offices without air-conditioning, fans or a plentiful supply of cool drinking water, you’re going to feel lethargic, and lack inspiration or creativity.

Where employees are attending important external meetings or are dealing with the public, it may not be appropriate for them to turn up to work in vest tops and shorts, says the TUC. But so long as staff are turned out appropriately, it should be possible to agree on a dress code that both fits with the corporate image and helps keep staff cool.

Summers are only going to get hotter and drier over the coming years as a result of climate change, so working out how to keep workplaces and staff cool is going to be of increasing concern for employers. In fact, summer dress could help the environment and budgets at the same time, if it means the company can turn down the air con a notch or two.

Although the law states that staff should work in a reasonable temperature, there is no legal maximum, only a legal minimum temperature. If you can feel the temperature rising where you work, check out our tips on working through a heatwave.

But the one which stuck most with staff was the requirement to monitor what their friends were writing on their profiles, and to delete anything that might ‘violate AP standards’ – in other words, you’re responsible for your friends as well as yourself. Kevin Keane, of the AP staff union, the News Media Guild, said “It is making some people cringe. It is not appropriate for a company that heralds free speech”.

Companies obviously have legitimate concerns around conduct online – stopping  confidentiality breaches or bringing the organisation into disrepute, and the best way to approach this is in negotiating a realistic and fair policy with staff, but AP seem to have stepped several paces over the mark.

If you’re concerned about what you write on social networking, and how it could affect you at work, check out our interactive training module, Not Safe For Work, where Guardian social networking expert Jemima Kiss tells you some of the areas you need to be considering.

Different people are using it in different ways, and many finding it opens up some great new ways to keep in touch or to make new contacts. Problem is, it’s just like any other social network in that it also opens up some very effective new ways to lose your job, if you’re not thinking about the implications of how you’re using it.

A US student looking for a summer job recently found this out when she was offered an intern position at California IT giant Cisco. She was in two minds about taking up the job, because of the long commute, and sent the tweet “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work” to what she thought was just her 45 close friends.

Unfortunately for her, a Cisco manager was monitoring public tweets about the company, and wrote her back a public reply: “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web“. As the manager was a heavily followed Twitter user, this spread all over the service in no time, earning her the internet nickname of Cisco Fatty.

She has some thoughts about how this scandal blew up so quickly on her own blog, and it’s a salutary tale for all of us using social media. Here on workSMART, we’re concerned that whilst people are holding more of the conversations they normally have offline with friends online, and a growing number of people network for work on social media (all the time linked to their personal life and activities), there’s going to be an awkward period for employment relationships, until employers catch up with the technology and grow slightly thicker cyber-skins.

We’ve actually made an online tool, called Not Safe For Work, which gives a basic training in loads of the ways your computer might end up getting you the sack if you don’t prepare properly (naturally including social media). It features videos from industry experts and a personal advice generator to give you a prescription based on your own situation. Give it a go now at www.worksmart.org.uk/nsfw

You can also read more about the event (with other tools and games to fiddle with during your precious break times) at www.workyourproperhoursday.com

Try the Long Hours Clinic tool now

If those employers who don’t have ‘bad weather’ policies refuse to pay staff or force them to take holiday, the TUC is worried they’ll cause unnecessary resentment among those who’ve been kept away from work through no fault of their own, or worse make some people risk traveling to work in genuinely dangerous situations.

Many employees are also able to work from home to at least some capacity, thanks to technology linking them to an office network, and this might be a useful alternative for both staff and employers to consider, as a way of making the best of the situation.

The TUC’s Brendan Barber said: “Across the country, people have been braving the elements to get into work. Employers and workers must keep each other informed as to whether it’s safe, or even possible, to commute to and from work. But for many the bad weather and lack of public transport have made their commute impossible. Good employers will already have ‘bad weather’ policies so that those who are unable to work are still paid.”

“Scrooge bosses that dock pay and take away holiday will add to their business woes by creating resentment among staff. Workers who have been prevented from working through no fault of their own should not have to foot the bill for the bad weather conditions. Instead we urge all employers to look after their staff during these adverse weather conditions.”

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.

Given that staff may end up having to do more themselves this year, we’ve redeveloped our online secret Santa tool, to make it easier to arrange low price gift giving amongst your colleagues. You tell us your colleagues’ names and addresses and it will do the rest, pairing people up with someone, but keeping it all hush hush as to who bought what for who.

Give it a go now at www.worksmart.org.uk/santa – It’s a fun, inexpensive way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive in workplaces that might not have had much to smile about recently.

You can also use our online greetings cards to send a personal Christmas message to friends and colleagues. You’ll find a selection of Christmas themed cards in our ecards section.

And to help those at work over the festive break, we’ve put together a guide to the pitfalls of working through Christmas and the New Year. Banned from sticking up tinsel, or worried you’ll have to work through Christmas lunch? We’ve got answers for your festive problems.

And of course, all of us at workSMART want to wish all our users a very happy Christmas and a great start to the working year in 2009.

This could have a huge impact on the firms they work for, who may stand to lose valuable commercial or customer data, or lose money through damage or downtime due to attacks, not to mention getting people into trouble – whether or not they know what they’ve done wrong.

The benefits that the Internet brings to UK business are growing every day. Social media and networking are increasingly important to people’s professional and personal lives. But employers have to put time and money into making sure their staff are aware of the dangers associated with working online, or they could just be pouring all the money they spend on the rest of their computer security systems down the drain.

So, to do something about this, we’ve got together with GetSafeOnline.org and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) to produce Not Safe For Work? – a free online toolkit for people at work in the UK. It has video interviews from industry experts, quizzes and reading lists, and can make you a personalised advice prescription, tailored to your own Internet usage.

Have a go now, it could tell you something that will save you a lot of grief.

And hey, let’s be careful out there!

But if you’d just rather browse the web in denial, we can (with tongue firmly in cheek) recommend a helpful utility called Recessionblocker.com, which simply screens out any of the gloomier words that might upset you when reading the news.