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Working long hours can lead to a number of problems, including stress and ill health, as well having an adverse impact upon personal relationship, families and social lives. If you are concerned that your team is working long hours, use some of the tips below to address the problem before it deteriorates.
Identify the Root Cause
First of all, identify the reasons why there is a long hours culture in your team. Identifying the root cause of the problem will help you decide on the most appropriate way of tackling it. For example, it might be because of:
- Work pressure: there is too much work to do and not enough people to do it. This might be due to heavier workloads, demanding customers or clients (including the expectation of a 24/7 service), greater competition, frequent travel, email overload, fewer staff and tighter budgets.
- Work organization: team members have poor time management or work prioritization skills.
- Training and development: team members are not sufficiently trained to carry out certain tasks.
- Presenteeism: team members feel they have to be seen to be working long hours in order to demonstrate commitment or are following an example set by their peers or management.
Set a Personal Example
One of the most important ways of tackling a long hours culture is to set a good example yourself.Your team will take their cues from how you work, so it’s important to be seen to manage your own hours effectively. You can do this by arriving for work on time and leaving on time. You should also ensure that you take your full lunch break where you leave your desk (rather than eating lunch at your desk).
You should also do all you can to ensure that your team members understand that working long hours is not a normal part of their job.If you occasionally need to request that your team members work extra hours, e.g. in emergency situations, where possible you should discuss this requirement in advance with your team and secure their agreement. However, try to avoid asking your team to work excess hours on a regular basis.
Set Realistic Deadlines
As the team’s manager, it is likely that you will be the main source of new work.The way in which you choose to delegate and channel work to your team has a powerful impact upon the hours they may work. Before you decide who to delegate a new piece of work to, consider whether you have a complete picture of each person’s work tasks. This is particularly important if people are already committed to a number of different projects.
Ensure you set realistic deadlines for projects and tasks by looking at reports of previous projects/tasks and determining how long they took to complete. Ask your team how long it takes to complete tasks and to identify where the ‘pressure points’ in the flow of work are. Make sure you are not holding things up yourself. Monitor work as it progresses and talk to your team members regularly to ensure that the timescales set remain both realistic and manageable.
Ask individuals to voice their concerns if they feel that unrealistic deadlines are being set for completion of work. Bear in mind that some people can find it difficult to say ‘no’ to their line manager, even if they are already overloaded with work.
Consider Training Needs
Sometimes people can start to feel overloaded when they don’t have the skills required to complete their work efficiently. This means they end up spending more time than is necessary in order to complete tasks to the required standards. If this is the case, consider whether some additional training and development will help to bring skills up to the required level. For example, perhaps your team members need some training on new systems or technology.
You might also conduct a skills audit or learning needs analysis exercise with your team, to identify and prioritize their learning and development needs. You should also consider whether resources need to be increased to help people work more efficiently (e.g. an increased training budget or a new software system to streamline key processes).
Plan Ahead
Forward planning will help you and your team to deal with unexpected emergencies, and take on board special leave, illness and holidays. Decide who will provide ‘crisis’ cover in the event of an emergency and whether cover can be provided on a remote basis, e.g. from home. Tackle individual instances of long hours working by reviewing working practices such as reporting systems, and re-planning or re-organizing work projects.
Change Work Patterns
Consider whether a change to your team’s working patterns could help alleviate some of the pressure. Would introducing a flexible working pattern or home-working arrangements be feasible, for example?
Conducting a job re-design exercise might also help you to spread workloads more equitably amongst the team. You could also consider introducing a rota system for key tasks. This can be useful where specific cover is needed – this should be split throughout the team.
Address Stress
If team members are showing signs of stress from working long hours, such as increased sickness absence, irritability or irrational behavior, you should take practical steps to tackle the issue. For example, you could organize a 'Work Your Proper Hours Day' where everyone starts and finishes work at their contracted time, and takes a proper lunch break. Or you could organize for a speaker from the L&D or HR department to come in to talk about stress management and time management techniques at your next team meeting.
Talk to Your Team
Ask team members regularly (e.g. at appraisals or performance reviews) whether they are experiencing problems with long hours. If so, examine the causes and give them your support to make changes, e.g. by encouraging them to adopt flexible working arrangements (if they are available).
Make Rewards Equitable
Make sure rewards are equitable. Ask yourself whether your best performers are the people who consistently work long hours.Remember that the decision to award pay increases, development opportunities or promotions should be based upon the quality of an individual’s output and their productivity, not just the number of hours put in.
