| Modernity or bust
Is the modern pace of work killing us off? Anna McNamee reveals a nation on the edge Not long ago I visited the office of an aspiring corporate bigwig. I was running late. ‘Have no fear,’ Ian assured me when I phoned to make my excuses, ‘I’ll be here until at least nine.’ When I finally arrived, the office was still packed with bustling workers. A somewhat crumpled underling with sweat patches under his arms and bags under his eyes ushered me into a room. There peering out from behind a stack of open folders and a computer screen was my contact. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said again, cutting my grovelling short. ‘I had a lunch meeting and so I’m just catching up on some of my emails. If you don’t reply as soon as you get them people think you’re a slacker.’ A quick game of I-spy around his inner sanctum told a sorry tale. Several changes of clothing hung on the back of the door (‘just in case’). He had his own coffee machine (‘the staff canteen closes at 5:30’) and a miniature basketball hoop (‘I can’t always get to the gym’). Perhaps most poignant of all was the collection of children’s books in one drawer. (‘My wife likes it if I can read the kids a story down the phone a couple of times a week,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘Just so they don’t forget who I am.’) Gentle probing revealed a 13-hour work day was par for the course for this prime specimen of management material. The framed photos of a grinning wife and three adorable children balanced on one corner of the desk were, no doubt, there to remind him what they looked like. The fact was, he’d also been working weekends and hadn’t really seen them in a while. ‘I know it must seem crazy,’ he admits. ‘But I work in a very competitive field and it just wouldn’t look right if I went home when there was still work to be done and deadlines were looming. There’s always either a crisis or something left to do.’ Ian is not unusual. According to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), three-quarters of those working long hours told interviewers that the main reason was a large workload. Ian’s company is in competition with a lot of others. ‘If we’re going to succeed we need to do better than the rest. That means turning in work of the highest possible standard and turning it around quickly. Everyone here works long hours because if we didn’t our rivals would. Yes, it’s stressful but I consider it a necessary evil.’ Ian is also mindful of the fact that if he wants to succeed he needs to put in what he calls ‘face-time’. ‘It’s important that my bosses see me as industrious and a hard worker. That’s one of the reasons I stay so late. If I went home before they did, it would count against me when it came to promotion.’ In the six years he’s been employed at his company Ian has never taken one sick day nor has he ever taken all the holiday he is entitled to. Dry your eyes and put away your hankies, because since I saw him, Ian has been promoted to head of his division. And hey! At least he had time to conceive those three children which puts him well ahead of some of his colleagues. CIPD research also revealed that long hours, stressful work environments and dedication to our careers have resulted in a massive drop in the national libido. Put more plainly: over half of the people they spoke to said that their partners were too tired when they got home from work to have sex. Put these findings together with those of a recent study done by the TUC, and the picture looks grimmer still. It revealed that, despite the introduction of the European Working Time Directive, which attempts to put a ceiling of 48 hours (six 8-hour days per week) on the maximum average working week, over 4 million of us regularly spend more time than that at the office. The rest of us are working an average of 43.6 hours in that time – that’s equivalent to an extra three whole days every month. As a nation we are now spending more time on the job than anyone else in Europe. The Belgians are among the most laid back Europeans, only putting in a weekly 38.4 hours. It’s official: work can kill Karoshi has yet to make it as a buzzword in current British usage, but that’s not to say that long hours and work related stress aren’t taking their toll on us here. Self-reported health problems in the past 12 months by people in the UK working 48 hours or more have included mental exhaustion (54%), difficulty sleeping (43%) and run the gamut from chronic headaches and irritable bowel syndrome to ulcers and drug or alcohol problems. The weird thing is that not all of this mayhem is brought about because we work for Scrooge-style bosses, keen to keep us working even on Christmas day. Deborah, is the marketing director of a major fashion outlet. She regularly burns the midnight oil but has few regrets. ‘I did begin to worry a bit when they moved the chocolate vending machine right outside my office door. Apparently I get through more Kit Kats in one week than the entire second floor get through in a month. But other than not having a particularly healthy diet and probably drinking more coffee than is good for me, I really love my job.’ But there’s another reason Deborah says she works so hard. ‘Most offices are still a little macho,’ she says. ‘Being a woman I feel that I have to work even harder than the men if I want to be taken seriously.’ Deborah believes that for women to succeed in the workplace they have to shoulder more than their fair share of the workload, but she’s adamant that her efforts are being rewarded. ‘In recognition of my hard work I was given a really swish Alfa Romeo as my company car and they’re talking about giving me a posting in Italy next year.’ Lucky Deborah! Italians, according to the TUC, only work an average of 38.5 hours every week. More |