One in five Australian employees are working at least 50
hours per week according to the International Labour Organisation. While figures released by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in
the UK, show unpaid overtime worked last year equated to 1,968 million hours,
with 5.3 million workers putting in an average of 7.2 additional hours per week.
Now that's a lot of hours worth of work going unpaid!
Commenting on the findings, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said
that this data sheds light on the "valuable but too often unrewarded"
extra hours that workers put in.
"But while many of the extra unpaid hours worked could easily be
reduced by changing work practices...a small number of employers are exploiting
staff by regularly forcing them to do excessive amounts of extra work for no
extra pay”.
"This attitude is not only bad for workers' health, it's bad for the
economy too as it reduces productivity and holds back job creation."
What's
more, if employees are having to frequently work excessive hours, workplace health and safety standards may slip, increasing the organisations exposure to workers' compensation or other claims due to fatigue or stress related injuries.
Employers should be doing more to recognise the unpaid overtime put in by
their staff – but first they need to have a system in place to effectively measure and report on overtime.
As a
provider of Time Management Systems, we are often asked about the value of
having an automated Time and Attendance System when an organisation only employs
salaried staff.
By having
all staff clock in and out of work, managers and supervisors can easily
identify just how much unpaid overtime employees are putting in and if
there is a particular pattern forming - e.g. are staff required to work longer hours around the end of the month or busy trading periods.
Armed with
this information you may be able to justify hiring additional staff or bringing
in contract labour during periods of increased activity, or at the very least
acknowledge the efforts of your team - perhaps introducing a Time
in Lieu scheme or incentives for those that put in the hard yards? In the long
run, this ultimately benefits you as a motivated and happy workforce generally
means increased productivity!
Flexible or remote working policies could also help. By working from home,
employees can cut out their daily commute, giving them more time in the day to
work and allowing them to clock off on time. Employee Self Service tools would allow staff working remotely to log their work hours or allocate their time to specific jobs/projects via Online Timesheets or PC based clocking tools.
