Why the long hours?

Several years ago I was working in a top UK advertising agency, withchnology means clients round the clock, maybe you should take a fresh look at the new EU Working Time Directive? Catherine Toole discovers that Brits work harder but not necessarily smarter. a glamorous client list and stylish offices. Thousands of hopefuls would apply for its graduate recruitment schemes; top creative teams from rival agencies would take pay cuts to join its creative department; and established film directors would agree to shoot commercials. I was, along with the majority of my colleagues, proud to be employed by the agency and determined to be successful.

So I put in long hours. Stuck around in the office until eight or nine at night. Sometimes later. Twice, unforgettably, I worked right through the night to manage an urgent workload. I went in at weekends, took work home. And I was never considered to be one of the most dedicated - many of my peers put in a lot more hours.

I forget at what point it changed from being a temporary measure, to cope with a temporarily enhanced workload due to a post-recessionary shrunken headcount, and became the accepted workplace culture. Soon, the few staff with the guts to arrive at quarter to nine and leave at five forty-five were regarded with great suspicion. The lethal combination of open-plan offices and a highly competitive workforce meant that nobody wanted to be the first to leave.

And all the while, the management did nothing to curtail this increasingly destructive situation. If anything, they were the worst offenders. Once, the chief executive (admittedly in a bid to curtail weekend working) flashed up a slide of the weekend signing-in book at the annual meeting. It had the opposite effect: staff now knew he checked the book and started turning up on Sundays to win brownie points. Three years later, exhausted, burnt out and fed up, I left the agency to go freelance - at least now if I pull an all-nighter it's down to me.

The European Community's Working Time Directive became law in the UK on 1 October 1998. It states that European employees should work a maximum working week of 48 hours averaged over a rolling 17-week period. There should be weekly rest periods of 24 hours, daily rest periods of at least 11 hours and a guaranteed three-week annual holiday. Yet national data shows that over a quarter of UK full-time employees work in excess of 48 hours per week and British employees work some of the longest hours in Europe. A high proportion of UK workers regularly put in more than 10 hours over and above their contractual working hours.

In IT long hours are prevalent since young companies, with predominantly young staff (or indeed predominantly male staff) are statistically the worst offenders. Couple this with customers who demand a 24-hour service, a highly competitive market, staff shortages and the increasing need to do business internationally (conflicting time zones increase working hours), and you can see why IT would be one of the major blackspots. This is especially so across the sales function, where pressure to improve performance both to achieve financial incentives and maintain personal reputations is enormous.

A study called Breaking the Long Hours Culture, published by the Independent Institute for Employment Studies (IES), suggests that long working hours can have a negative impact both on individuals and the companies they work for and, ultimately, on the economy and society as a whole.

In-depth interviews with a range of employers and employees across different market sectors show that for individuals, working overly long hours may lead to "adverse impacts on personal relationships, families, social lives and community activities; ill-health and reduced employment opportunities for those ... unable or unwilling to work long hours". For organisations which may have traditionally viewed long working hours as a way of getting the maximum from their employees, the long-term effect is likely to be "increased sickness absence, low morale and high staff turnover", as well as the bleak outlook of "lower productivity and quality of work outputs" and "greater health and safety risks".

Co-author of the study, Jenny Kodz (pictured above), says that working long hours is a quintessentially British affair: "We picked up that it was very much a British work culture, in fact many other European cultures viewed long working hours very negatively, believing it is inefficient not to be able to complete your work in the allotted working hours."

So what stops British staff from going home on time? "In the case of one technology company that we studied, it was a combination of things," answers Kodz. "such as needing to meet customer requirements and to be constantly available to customers; tight deadlines; peer pressure; an individual commitment to doing the work well; seeing senior staff putting in long hours; time wasted travelling between sites; staff shortages and feeling that promotion could only be expected if long hours were put in."

Fellow study author and IES research fellow, Marie Strebler, says that the current "long hours culture" can only be broken if employers take the EU Working Time Directive seriously, rather than simply looking to get round it. "The fundamental business issue," Strebler urges, "... is to understand the causes of long hours, note their consequences and devise policies to ameliorate them."

Here is where the real cultural problem lies. As with my erstwhile chief exec, simply flashing the weekend signing-in book and advising staff to work fewer hours, is rarely successful and may even backfire. Says Strebler: "It is unrealistic for employers to tell staff to stop working long hours and expect this to address the issue, while still piling on the work; this is too simplistic. Employers need to understand the problem, who within the organisation is working long hours and the reasons they do so." The IES study suggests employers may have to be prepared to change working patterns, invest in training and development, visibly change management behaviour from the top and even try 'go home on time days' to really beat the problem.

Kodz admits that it was difficult to find UK employers which had taken serious measures to reduce long working hours in the wake of the EU directive.

She does, however, cite Barclays' IT business unit, Barclays Technology Services, as a technology employer which has successful tackled the problem.

"BTS introduced a staff development programme which they have cascaded from the top down. It's a five-day course looking at how to balance your goals, not just looking at working hours but examining how to set priorities both at home and work, and how to live more effectively." The programme has had many tangible benefits for BTS staff, with better time management enabling one employee to cut his working hours from 70 hours per week to 35 and prove no less productive.

Any IT employer who views such measures as an indulgent waste of resources might be impressed by the fact that, since the programme began, BTS staff turnover has fallen to four per cent, against an IT industry level of up to 20 per cent.

"Young and single people may well be happy to work long hours but those who need to take outside responsibilities might find these hours prohibitive," says Kodz. "One technology employer we spoke to was concerned that he was losing out on a wide pool of people to recruit from. Also it seems illogical to recruit someone partly on the strength of their outside interests and then, by expecting them to work long hours, lose the benefits of this."

In IT sales and marketing, where contacts and personality are key differentiators, it's always been important to protect your staff equity. If breaking the long hours culture can do this, then perhaps this is one EU directive the Brits should take seriously.

Breaking the Long Hours Culture, by J Kodz, B Kersley, MT Strebler and SO Regan, is IES report number 352 and costs #19.95. Call the IES on 01273 686 751 for your copy.

www.employment-studies.co.uk.

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