Did you make it home in time for David Attenborough’s latest, wonderful, offering last night or were you stuck at your desk, the joys of the pygmy blue-tongued skink to remain forever a mystery? If you’ve made it to the giddy heights of management, you well have been chained to your keyboard well after ‘going home’ time: a Chartered Management Institute survey of 1,500 managers has found that 89% regularly work more than their contracted hours.
Some food for thought:
• The average manager works an hour and 18 minutes over contract everyday
• That’s equivalent to an extra, unpaid, 40 days a year per manager
• Or 184m extra days, nationally
Of those surveyed, 3% claimed to work longer hours ‘to get ahead’, while 54% put in the extra time just to keep on top of their workload. A third of the respondents worked longer hours by choice.
And the industry split is interesting. If we look at the proportion of managers working two hours or more unpaid overtime per day, the results are:
Transport: 52%
IT: 45%
Education: 39%
Manufacturing: 38%
Insurance: 28%
Construction: 34%
Utilities: 34%
Tourism: 33%
Health: 32%
Emergency services: 31%
Engineering: 31%
The UK average is 36%.
According to the TUC, almost 5m British workers regularly do overtime, adding up to £4,955 worth of free work a year. That’s why this Friday, they’re staging a Work your proper hours day, having calculated that if employees worked all their unpaid overtime from the start of the year, February 22nd would be the first day they would be paid. Remember that at 5 o’clock ….
