Daily grind under scrutiny

A study aims to gauge how well New Zealanders juggle home and work. JULIE MIDDLETON reports.

Plans are underway for a study into whether New Zealand executives feel they have a healthy balance between work and home life - but if overseas examples are any guide, too many of us are stress bunnies working long hours and fretting about it.

The study, planned by Auckland recruitment company Pohlen Kean, will be the New Zealand leg of a 24-country survey recently carried out its by British affiliate Abora-Global and claimed to be the first of its type.

That internet-based survey, released in May, was two-pronged, asking managers about issues such as workload, stress levels, job satisfaction and time distribution, and human resources heads about attitudes to the work/life balance dilemma.

There were 2216 usable responses, from staff in small and medium-sized enterprises to companies employing more than 1500 people.

But the closest the survey came to New Zealand was Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Pohlen Kean's Murray McLachlan says there are "pragmatic, business and social reasons" why organisations need to know what staff consider ideal working conditions, and that is why the company will carry out the survey.

It has employed a market research specialist to tweak the survey for New Zealand culture and add further questions that will probe the issue of how performance can be lifted while fostering a work/life balance.

McLachlan expects to take the survey to more than 1000 clients across the country in the New Year.

Results are expected between April and June.

But if the overseas findings are any guide - and there is no reason to see them as incomparable - New Zealanders will assess themselves as falling far short of achieving a balance between work and home.

The Abora-Global study, called Work and Life Balance, revealed that participants were fairly evenly split by gender - 59 per cent men and 41 per cent women - and they had an average age of 40.

More than half worked for multi-national companies, and most were parents.

The average manager reported difficulty in balancing life and work commitments - they spent 50 hours at work and a further six hours commuting. Four in 10 managers exceeded 50 hours. Age was a factor: the 35-45 age group worked longer than any other, and the higher they were up the ladder, the longer the hours.

Most were satisfied with their jobs, but just 12 per cent of female and 17 per cent of male managers had not experienced burnout during the past year.

Most managers reported that stress levels were rising annually because of "business as usual" (53 per cent) rather than exceptional circumstances. Given their meat-in-the-sandwich position, human resources managers were among the most stressed of the stressed.

The fallout from workplace stress affected leisure time (cited by 57 per cent), followed by health (43 per cent) and family (40 per cent).

More than 50 per cent of women thought stress was affecting their health and that they were overloaded at work "very frequently."

* For more information on the survey contact Murray McLachlan on pk@pohlenkean.co.nz