ONE IN THREE American employees are chronically overworked while 54 per cent have felt overwhelmed at some time in the past month by how much work they had to complete
ONE IN THREE American employees is chronically overworked while 54 per cent have felt overwhelmed at some time in the past month by how much work they had to complete.
A US study of more than 1,000 waged and salaried employees found that employees’ priorities have an effect on their state of being overworked as well.
Employees who are work-centric are more likely to be overworked than those who maintain a more balanced lifestyle, giving equivalent priority to their lives on and off the job. Possibly contrary to expectation, employees with greater family responsibilities were no more likely to be overworked than those without these responsibilities, except for elder care.
“Ironically, the very same skills that are essential to survival and success in this fast-paced global economy, such as multi-tasking, have also become the triggers for feeling overworked,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the non-profit Families and Work Institute, which conducted the study.
“Being interrupted frequently during work time and working during non-work times, such as while on vacation, are also contributing factors for feeling overworked.”
The Institute found 79 per cent of employees had access to paid vacations in 2004 and that more than one third of employees (36 per cent) had not and were not planning to take their full vacation.
On average, workers take 14.6 vacation days annually with more than one-third (37 per cent) taking fewer than seven days. Only 14 percent of employees take vacations of two weeks or more.
Additionally, while employees report that it takes three days on average to begin to relax, the longer employees take off at any one time, the more likely they are to return to work feeling more relaxed and energised.
“Perhaps the most important finding from the study related to vacations is that the more one works during vacations, the more overworked one is,” said Terry Bond, vice president of the Families and Work Institute and co-author of the study.
“One might hypothesise that employees who work during vacations are doing themselves a favour in avoiding a pile up of work when they return.”
The opposite seems to be true, however. “Sometimes being truly away from work helps employees return less overwhelmed and more able to engage energetically in work,” he said.
In addition, nearly half of employees who feel overworked report that their health is poor. For example, only 8 per cent of employees who are not overworked experience symptoms of clinical depression compared with 21 per cent of those who are highly overworked.
