Issue #16:
Employee Overwork
About our guest author
I am continually hearing from my clients that there are not enough hours inthe day, they will never catch up and they are always behind no matter how many hours they work. It no longer is an issue of life/work balance but anon-going state of overwork. There does not seem to be any easy answers. How do we align who we are with what we do when we are experiencing a sense ofhelplessness in controlling how we spend our time?
I've asked a colleague of mine, Nanda Berman, to be a Guest Author for this
e-series. Nanda is a certified business & career coach and organizational
consultant who has spent many years working with both for-profit and
non-profit firms, large and small. She holds a Masters degree in
Organizational Psychology from John F. Kennedy University, for which she
completed a Masters thesis entitled Employee Overwork in US High-Tech
Corporations. She chose this topic after witnessing first hand the struggles
of employees to contain their work and find time for the rest of their
lives. I hope this adaptation from her thesis provides some insights and
ideas to align who you are with what you do as you deal with this
challenging subject.
-Carole Rehbock
Anouncement
Nanda and I are forming Coaching Groups to work with individuals and teams to find strategies for dealing with "Overwork". Please contact me ifyou are interested in participating, email carole@rehbocksolutions.com
-Carole Rehbock
Employee Overwork
by Nanda Berman
As many of you know first-hand, employee overwork is a regular part
of the US middle-class, professional lifestyle. The eight-hour day seems to
be a thing of the past, and most weekends are spent either working or being
"on-call" by pager, cell phone, and/or email, thus available to work at any
moment.
But overwork cannot be defined simply as long work hours. On the
contrary, it is not about the number of hours worked but is instead
determined by the level of control an employee has over how much they are
working. I might enjoy and choose to work 50+ hour weeks, therefore not
feeling overworked per se. However, my colleague might want to work only 40
but feel she must work more because she has so much to do or in order to
prove herself and get ahead. Or maybe she enjoys her regularly long work
hours but simply wishes she could take her full vacation benefit without
being overloaded when she returns. So she only takes a day here and there,
all the while racking up the accumulated vacation time that she feels unable
to enjoy. In this case, she would be defined as experiencing overwork
What causes this experience of overwork? There are many factors, of
course, but the main causes include intense job pressure; consistent
interruptions; multitasking; accessibility via cell phone, pager, email,
etc.; and working while on vacation. Within "intense job pressure" can be
global responsibilities-the need to be available and working over multiple
time zones-as well as systems and process inefficiencies. Often with
aggressive deadlines one after the other, there doesn't seem to be time to
take a step back and look at making the work more efficient, so people work
long hours as a result.
Clearly, there is cause for concern here. Studies show increased
stress, lack of sleep, and reduced downtime can lead to serious health
concerns, not to mention interfere with living a satisfying life. More
recent reports document negative effects such as work mistakes and reduced
employee IQ connected to overwork and excessive use of mobile technologies.
In this light, it would be in both the employer's and the employees'
best interests to reduce employee overwork, as its negative consequences
affect everyone. On the employer side, corporate leaders today are caught in
a bind, often wanting to build a healthy work culture and yet facing
mounting pressure to post higher and higher quarterly earnings. In fact,
with the ever increasing global influence on the US economy, it would hardly
be surprising if many companies felt forced to choose short-term results
over long-term productivity, in this way unable to prioritize employee
well-being as they might wish to.
But in the face of all this gloom and doom, a few promising
strategies to address the problem of overwork have emerged from select
companies. Examples of successful long-term job-sharing arrangements at the
both individual contributor and upper management levels are inspiring, along
with corporations who have unilaterally placed strict limits on their
corporate work hours. Another interesting idea is to establish governmental
tax credits for firms who opt to reduce company working hours instead of cut
their workforce.
On the individual level, employee strategies for moderating or
reducing overwork include boundary setting and addressing work process
deficiencies. How many of us tend to say yes to every interruption that
comes our way? Whether it's reading and responding to our email throughout
the day or saying yes to all requests without qualification, such
interruptions and distractions can make one overloaded and unable to
concentrate. Setting clear limits instead of dropping everything can often
help increase our own efficiency, and occasionally reduce the amount of
nonessential work we end up with. Turning off the auto-check on our incoming
mail and scheduling our email time can be a useful practice for finding more
time in one's day. In terms of other work process issues, taking time to
examine how we go about our day can help reveal where we could make our work
easier for ourselves.
Bottom line-most of us work very, very hard, whether we are managers
or individual contributors, and it's imperative that we find ways to lighten
our load. Understanding how overwork is enabled and plays out in our lives
and the lives of our employees can help us find ways to create some space
and get some relief. Little by little, our growing awareness can allow us to
be more effective at making positive change in our work lives, not to
mention our lives overall.
Resources:
For further reading on overwork, here are a few recommendations:
- Married to the Job: Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do aboutIt, Ilene Philipson, Ph.D.
- Coming Up for Air: How to Build a Balanced Life in a WorkaholicWorld, Beth Sawi
- Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much,Families and Work Institute, available for free download at www.familiesandwork.org/announce/workforce.html
- Take Back Your Time, www.timeday.org
You can contact Nanda Berman, M.A. at (510) 654-7570, e-mail at:
nanda@nandaberman.com
COPYRIGHT AND PUBLISHER INFORMATION
ALIGNING WHO YOU ARE WITH WHAT YOU DO is ©2006 Carole Rehbock. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be reproduced without express written permission from the publisher.
Carole Rehbock is a career and life coach, and consultant, who specializes in helping people align who they are with what they do in life. Learn more at http://www.rehbocksolutions.com or give her a call at 510-843-6417.
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