Reducing stress is 'key to solving long working hours culture'

Reducing stress is the key to improving the work/life balance of UK workers, management consulting firm Croner has said.

Croner said that working long hours is a classic sign of stress and said that stress levels were "soaring" among employees who are putting in extra hours due to such issues as underlying workload demands, productivity issues and a failure to take annual leave.

Croner's statements come ahead of the TUC's 'Work Your Proper Hours' day, which will take place on Friday, which aims to highlight the problems of the UK's long working hours culture.

However, Croner said that encouraging employees to work their proper hours tomorrow would only "put a Band Aid" over the UK's long hours problem.

Richard Smith, employment services director at Croner, said: "While 'Work Your Proper Hours Day' raises awareness of the unpaid overtime problem, it's not really helping employers to manage it."

Mr Smith said that long hours were not necessarily productive hours and said that employers needed to assess whether a presenteeism culture, unproductive working methods and stress are playing a part in this.

Mr Smith said: "Employers should be addressing the root cause of the long hours culture - and meeting their 'duty of care' to employees - by looking out for the signs of stress and taking action to reduce its cause."

Croner suggested a number of methods of how this could be achieved, including individual meetings with employees to identify where their workload could be reduced or working methods improved to help them leave work at a reasonable time. Employers should also be urged to monitor annual leave, to ensure that employees take all their entitled holiday time in order to unwind and de-stress, the firm said.

Mr Smith said: "While it's reasonable for an employer to expect some degree of flexibility during a particularly busy period, employees shouldn't feel they are on their own, and should feel able to talk to their manager if they have too much work or are struggling to cope."

"Rather than restricting working hours, better management and monitoring of workloads and stress levels should naturally help bring down the number of hours worked."

(KMcA/GB)