KEY POINTS:
As the holidays approach, a lot of people are feeling the strain of having worked for a long time without a break. For many workers, the concept of the standard 40-hour work week might seem like a dream.
But David Lowe, advisory services manager for the Employers and Manufacturers Association, says it's more about being flexible than counting the hours worked.
"Employers really need to provide some flexibility to accommodate the other things that people do in their lives. And those that do will obviously be more attractive to go and work for," Lowe says.
The skills shortage has forced employers to be more flexible with the number of hours worked per week. And inevitably some weeks will be longer than others.
"There will be plenty of times when people need to work more than 40 hours in salaried jobs but there will equally be times when they will be able to work less."
Organisations that work their people too hard are naturally self-limiting.
"If you are running a culture of pushing people too hard then eventually you'll lose your good people when they find someone who has a different way of operating," Lowe says.
Lowe says this scenario can often play out in the legal profession.
"There are some types of industries that are known for asking people to work more."
But no matter how long the work week is, Lowe says the key to keeping employees healthy is balance.
"We would encourage people to look at work/life balance and flexibility rather than have a culture of either long working hours or a culture of clock watching."
For some people, the 40-hour work week is a complete myth. In some cases, it can be too rigid and work against everybody, Lowe says.
"There is a certain point in people's careers that your job becomes your lifestyle. You get to senior positions and when you're the managing director and chief executive or a Prime Minister, you can't say, 'Well, actually I'm not going to go to that function in the evening because I've got to finish at 5pm'."
Despite how fast-paced life might seem these days, the actual reported hours worked, according to Statistics New Zealand's Household Labour Force Survey, have remained relatively unchanged since the survey began in 1991.
The average weekly paid hours for 2006 were 37.16. But the average usual weekly hours worked in all jobs in 2006 were 45.85.
This may suggest employees are doing some discretionary tasks off the clock, says Michael O'Driscoll, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Waikato.
"Work can just take over more and more of our lives, not necessarily just in terms of time but certainly in terms of expectation. The boss can expect you to be doing things on the weekend even though officially [you're] not at work," O'Driscoll says.
He says not to read too much into the survey.
"This is all reported hours, so it depends on what people's perceptions are and what they're reporting."
Technology is also allowing for more spillover from work life into family and personal life.
"I think there is a perception that work is encroaching more on people's time and energy. There is a perception that work demands and work requirements are impinging more on people's lives."
O'Driscoll says there is now ambiguity over what a work week means.
"The work week no longer exists. I think the concept of a working week has changed dramatically over the last maybe five years or so."
The home computer, the mobile, the PDA - employees are on tap after hours and on weekends.
"I think there's always the possibility that the work will just expand to encroach more and more on our lives and that we'll be doing things on the weekends and at night time and so on."
But O'Driscoll says it is not all bad and there are benefits as well as drawbacks.
"It gives you a bit more flexibility and a person can try to balance out their family commitments and responsibilities a little bit more with their job requirements."
Family-friendly policies are great but O'Driscoll says they also blur the boundaries between work and private life.
"One of the things that can happen is you get an emotional spillover. The stress and the strain of the job transfers into your family life and your personal life," he says.
"You can't switch off. You can't just say, 'I'm walking out the door and that's it'."
If you're doing work from home - even if it's just little things - you should consider it a job task and define it as work.
"It could be that people don't define these things as work. So, I get on to the email at home and I'm doing a few things. I don't necessarily think about that as work. It might be mixed up with some other things that I'm doing."
If work hours increase and people are doing more and more work outside work hours and at home, O'Driscoll says that will take its toll.
"I think it's unfortunate that in the professional, corporate world there does seem to be some expectation that a person will just do whatever they need to do to get the job done and be effective."
The real problem is when the goal posts start moving, with expectations increasing more and more.
"There's this notion that you will be devoting your time, your energy, your commitment to the organisation and it's not clearly defined exactly what the boundary is."
But before things get to be too much, O'Driscoll says employees need to notify their employers as outlined in the Health and Safety in Employment Act.
"Somebody needs to do an assessment. Is the problem that the employer is expecting too much or isn't providing enough resources? Are the demands too heavy?
"Or is it more of a problem that the individual has some limitations in terms of being able to cope with these things?"
O'Driscoll says there is no simple answer but both parties should avoid blaming each other and work together to find a solution.
