KEY POINTS:
Changing work patterns are causing a culture shift in New Zealand, which is changing everything we do, from the way we shop to how much we take part in sports and whether we attend church.
Dr Erling Rasmussen, professor of work and employment at the AUT business school, has been studying how New Zealand work patterns have changed since 1987.
And that change has been so great, he says, that "atypical employment patterns are becoming standard employment practice".
The move to a 24/7 society has seen an increase in jobs involving seven-day rosters, from early in the morning until late at night.
Restructuring in many industries has seen a rise in self-employed contractors and sub-contractors and there have been big increases in the proportion of people working part-time - as well as those working more than 40 hours a week.
The latest Census figures show 36 per cent of men and 19 per cent of women in full-time jobs regularly work more than 50 hours a week.
"We've got a long hours culture, in particular in a lot of professional occupations," says Rasmussen.
Changes in technology mean workers in New Zealand can deal directly with customers overseas, leading to an increase in shift work - and the number of sectors it affects.
Fiona Johnston, founder and director of Shiftwork Services, says shift work was traditionally the preserve of emergency workers, hospital workers, cleaners, journalists, manufacturing workers and some other, mostly blue-collar, occupations.
Now it is present in banking and finance, call centres, retail and many more industries. "All industries now are going around the clock."
She cites as an example a large exporter that previously had smaller call centres dotted throughout the world. It recently centralised all the work into one Auckland call centre.
"They have to work in the time zones of the countries of their customers, which means in Auckland they work around the clock."
Working outside the 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday week can have benefits for not just customers and society, but also for workers.
But the effect of extended, atypical hours, says Johnston, is fatigue with implications beyond the workplace.
"You are not motivated to organise a social life, you are not very good with your family.
"A lot of our clients are men and they find it difficult to exercise, because a lot of men, particularly blue-collar workers, are team players. But they can't be reliable with their local sports clubs."
One business she worked with had difficulty because many workers did not want to do the Saturday day shift because that was when they had church services.
For companies relying on shift work, the answer lies in making an effort to ascertain what roster arrangements work best for not only the business but also its employees and their families, says Johnston.
"Where these decisions are made without consulting the workforce, the outcome is high turnover, fatigue, increased accidents and incidents."
And Rasmussen says we need to look at what hours are sustainable, not just for businesses, but for individual workers and the economy.
"We all know when we work long hours that by the end of the day we are less productive. It's one of the big things we are grappling with - how can we become more productive, instead of using more people and working them harder?
"We can't increase productivity by working longer and harder, and I think most people recognise that.
"I see any increase in productivity in a sustainable way [happening] by investment - investing in technology and machinery but also investing in the people involved."
