IMPACT OF LONG WORKING HOURS ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL, MENTAL HEALTH AND PERFORMANCE

Workers in the United States put in more hours at work and take fewer vacation days than those in most industrialized countries. But the U.S isn't the most productive country in the world. When it comes to full productivity France stands as the country with best productivity among employees working only forty hours a week with lots of vacation. The literature across suggests that there is a direct or indirect association between working long hours and overall performance. The literature suggests that there is an association between working long hours and fatigue. There is some evidence that working long hours can lead to stress or mental ill health, although these findings are not yet proved conclusively. The way an individual thinks about the job, her interests and aspirations determines this factor. But still there is no strong evidence on the direct effect of long working hours on the overall productivity of the employee. There is a strong evidence for the effect of long working hours on work life balance. Through this assignment I wish to understand the trends of working hours across employees of different industries the impact of long working hours on employees. Researchers across time have associated working long hours with various effects mediated by the following factors: Individual factors (gender, age, personality) Rest breaks in between main job Type of job/occupation Type of work environment or work culture First, let us define long working hours. Hours in main job and other jobs, commuting time, business travel time can be considered while calculating total working hours. The long hours may be considered differently for men (over 60 hours per week) and women (over 40 hours a week). Also, they refer to working time to denote commuting time and work that may be done within that time and also to denote whether hours worked in a second job are considered alongside hours in the main job (i.e. total hours). It is important to consider the different factors that may mediate any long hours effects. There are many variables that affect the impact of long working hours on employee. Some of these factors include type of job or occupation; work environment and work culture; culture of country; age; gender; individual differences such as personality; choice over working hours; or lifestyle habits. The impact of long hours may be greater for jobs that require constant vigilance and attention, such as driving, security personal etc. Furthermore, prevailing cultures of workplaces or countries may affect the long hours-health relationship, as it is possible that different cultural attitudes towards and perceptions of long hours may determine the impact of long working hours on individual. Several reasons have been identified to account for the scheduled/unscheduled overtime: 1) Work Pace Inertia. It has been found that worker expend energy at an established pace determined by long periods of adaptation. Hence, as the working hours increase, there is a tendency to adjust the pace to accomplish about the same amount of work in an extended workday or workweek as was accomplished before the extension. The independence of the workers reduces in this case. 2) Absenteeism.

Absenteeism is pronounced when the effects of cumulative fatigue, desires of workers to spend more time with their families, and the need for time away from the job to take care of personal business combine with lack of economic forces an individual to work all available hours because of the high pay received during overtime weeks. 3) Morale and Attitude. Situations which adversely affects morale and which lessens cooperative and positive attitudes toward work, the employer and customer will result in reduced productivity. Fatigue causes deterioration in morale and positive attitude. Deteriorating morale and attitude coupled with fatigue increases friction among the workers, grievances against management, and jurisdictional disputes with other trades. 6) Turnover. Frequent turnover of employees is expensive and disruptive. Regardless of the skills and talents of the new workers, a considerable amount of time is needed to train them to the specific needs of the project and orient them to what they will be doing. For projects with short deadlines, this may demand extra working hours from some of the employees. 7) Job Shopping. In an area where one or more large projects have scheduled overtime, workers seem to spend more effort finding the project highest premiums than in getting the work accomplished. Workers believe that if they work overtime for such projects, this will provide them visibility and greater rewards. 8) Supervision Problems. Because of their greater responsibilities, supervisory employees are likely to feel the fatiguing and suffer from demoralizing effects of prolonged overtime schedules even more than production workers. 9) In efficient management of the project. Some projects due to inefficient optimization of the projects, managers might demand more working hours from the employees. 9) Pressure for More Overtime. It is common for jobs with scheduled overtime to worker pressure for more overtime and slowdowns among workers receiving less overtime pay than others. This might force some employees to work overtime. We will now discuss on various impacts of long working hours on employees. Working overtime consistently over a period of time may lead to acute or cumulative fatigue. It is recognised that fatigue is likely to be related to long daily work hours especially if there is a lack of sleep; whereas occasionally, it will be due to long weekly work hours (cumulative fatigue). There appears to be a link between working long hours and cardiovascular disorder. This will depend on the existing medical conditions of the person. Studies have been carried out in Japan where syndrome of cardiovascular attacks such as strokes, myocardial infarction or acute cardiac failure has received much attention and it is widely thought that the long hours culture of the Japanese is a major contributory factor. Long working hours also affect the psychological/ mental health of an employee. There is a small but significant correlation between increased hours of work and poor psychological health symptoms. It might lead to depression, role strain, poor sleep, and tension, problems with relationships, anxiety, frustration, mood symptoms and general mental stress. Individual factors such as the way an individual thinks about their job and the amount of control they have over their work patterns will affect this long hours psychological health relationship. Studies have reported various links

between long hours and unhealthy lifestyles. Changing from standard to long hours was associated with increased smoking, higher alcohol consumption, decreases in physical activity levels, and unhealthy weight gain. Long working hours might lead to unhealthy eating patterns, take time off physical exercise. This has proved to lead to obesity. It is pointed out that there are difficulties in establishing links with lifestyle habits such as smoking and drinking to long working hours because such behaviours may exist before the change in working hours. There may be a multitude of other factors also, not related to long hours, which could cause the onset of such negative lifestyle behaviours (e.g. social norms or enjoyment). Nevertheless it is important to consider these factors while analysing the impact of unscheduled working hours on employees. Due to insufficient evidences and studies, it is not possible to completely conclude upon the physical impacts of long working hours, but nevertheless it is important that these concerns should be addressed. Impact on performance can be measured directly or indirectly. Most of the available evidence supports a link between longer working hours and lowered performance but this relationship is complex and not conclusive. There exist two main methods of measuring productivity. The first is in terms of an input - output ratio (e.g. output per unit of labour) and the second is as a percentage of full capacity (e.g. 950 out of 1000 units is 95% capacity). However, in some of the studies that it is not clear what measure of productivity has been used. But over the years reliability of such researches are being questioned. For example, factors, such as practice effects, workers exerting extra effort at the end of a day, or whether a procedure is under machine or human control, may influence performance and efficiency outcomes; workers may be voluntarily limiting their output levels and not working to the best of their ability for whatever reason; and certain results for daily or hourly output variations came from different workers and different jobs. Workers might be underperforming because of the work culture of deficient rewarding system in the company. All such issues may limit the accuracy of research findings. More recently there has been a shift towards measuring performance through various tests and work task simulations, designed to involve skills that are essential to particular work tasks. Surveys were conducted among managers and other employees in various organizations across different domains on the impact of working hours on productivity and it was found of large majority of employees believed that the long working hours have an adverse effect on their productivity. But such surveys were also criticized as self-awareness of productivity and performance cant be reliable. It was found that productivity was further enhanced when 10-minute rest breaks were introduced in the mornings and afternoons. It seems that the relationship between working hours and performance either measured directly through productivity outcomes or indirectly through performance tests or surveys suggest that there is a negative impact of long working hours on employee productivity. But there are limitations to most methods of performance research and many factors may mediate the relationship. Work Life Balance refer to working hours that are sufficiently short to ensure an individuals desired balance between work and family or home life is achieved and maintained. The literature suggests that working long hours impacts negatively on home and family life. Long hours workers tend to feel that they are not happy with the amount of time they devote to work and how it impacts on their family and home life. In general working long hours is associated with poorer work-life balance and the conclusions are straightforward. Long hours were associated with conflict between work and home life, other stressors such as quantity of workload, work variability and frequency of stressful events were related to work-family conflict. Thus we can understand from different surveys and researches that the long working hours of employees have a negative impact on the employees physical and mental health, productivity, and work life balance. But we have also learned that there are many factors which mitigates this impact and thus its very difficult to have a conclusion of the impact of unscheduled working time on employee behaviour and productivity. Keeping the companys targets in best interest we should

advice that employees should make sure they do smart work and learn how to deliver excellence in optimized time. It is important to stay focussed during the working hours, work faster, work in parallel if necessary. This way an employee can deliver maximum productivity in minimum time.

References:Extended Working Hours Review by Helen Creed and David Todd Working long hours by Johanna Beswick http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/labourrelations/PDF/Publications/EWH_Final_27Feb04.pdf http://www.del-mar.com/Templates/Overtime%20and%20Productivity.pdf