Technology contributes to long hours syndrome

May 8, 2008

After my mini rant of yesterday about the Apprentice, I didn’t get to watch it last night in the end, but I did see something interesting on the news that said that employees who have company laptops, mobile phones and blackberries work on average 20 days more than other employees per year – that’s basically all your holidays gone! This is because people are available constantly and because they are able to access their work information from nearly anywhere.

This is quite a tricky situation because this problem basically conflicts completely with one of the main benefits of having these kinds of technologies. Opportunities for flexible working arrangements, such as home working are greatly increased by mobile technology, and in theory can allow workers to have a greater work-life balance, but it appears to be having the opposite effect for many people. I know how tempting it can be when you’re at home to just do ‘5 minutes’ work that turns into a lot longer – I do it all the time and I haven’t even got a computer or internet access at home, I just scribble on note pads. I imagine if I was able to access my work from home I’d be doing even more bits of work here and there all the time. Also, if you’ve got a blackberry it’s tempting to keep checking what messages have come through when you’re not in work.

I’m not sure what the answer is to this – on the one hand you want to provide these technologies for employees, not just for flexible working but for staff who may go out to client meetings or work between locations, but there is a clear need to ensure they aren’t working ridiculous hours or experiencing burn out from not having a break from their jobs. A clear policy on this issue would probably be a good place to start, explaining what the equipment is to be used for. But I think this is quite often a cultural issue – and if there’s an embedded long hours culture then it can put pressure on staff to carry out work at home. So the change really needs to take place from the top, and this is where I think HR may face difficulty in trying to reduce the negative effects of mobile technologies.

Posted by hrgirl | Filed Under Recruitment and Retention 

Comments

Got something to say?