Census data revealed nearly 300 people working 24-7, according to reports
Census data has revealed that some New Zealanders are working longer hours on average compared to previous years, prompting calls for a re-evaluation of work-life balance.
The Census indicates that New Zealanders now work an average of 37.2 hours per week, a decrease from 38.1 hours in 2013, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.
Despite this overall decline, a striking finding emerged: 297 individuals reported working 168 hours per week, equating to every hour of every day.
This is an increase from 273 individuals in 2018, according to the RNZ. The Census reported a total of 2.6 million people who indicated they were employed.
Dr. Paula O'Kane from the University of Otago's management department suggested that many of those who reported working all the time may be self-employed or in on-call situations.
"They may see themselves working 24/7 because they could be called out at any point in time," O'Kane told RNZ. "While they're probably not working 24/7 it's probably that on-call nature of a small, self-employed organisation that makes them self-report as working 24/7."
Extended hours reported for NZ
Meanwhile, the Census found that while nearly a million workers claimed to work 40 hours weekly, there are still others who are working:
- 50 hours (186,450 individuals)
- 60 hours (69,192 individuals)
- 80 hours (9,201 individuals)
In her comments to RNZ, O'Kane said she would like to see the number of hours worked by employees "go down," stressing that output is "way more important" than the time spent working.
"We spend a lot of time talking about those input measures, the hours worked, but that doesn't relate to productivity. We have this well-publicised low productivity per hours worked. If we worked fewer hours we could see more productivity," she said.
"The output is way more important than the hours you spend working. If we could get people into more of those working models and get more productivity in shorter hours, we could have better work-life balance, better well-being for individual employees and better production potentially, too."
