The World Health Organisation has just published a study looking at the health effects of working long hours and concluded that in 2016 745,000 extra people worldwide died from heart disease or strokes as a result of long working hours. The risk of stroke was 35% higher amongst those who had habitually worked 55 hours or more per week compared to those with a working week of between 35 to 40 hours.
This of course is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the health implications of long working hours. Many strokes and heart attacks do not kill but result in disability, and strokes and heart attacks come along with, and because of, other diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. Even those who have not died as a result of these working hours may be living with life impairing conditions. For many, long working hours are also associated with long periods spent being sedentary which in itself has been shown to be as big a threat to public health as smoking or obesity.
These widespread working practices shine a light on the priorities we have as a society. We prioritise economic prosperity above health. This prioritisation is misguided both in its aim and in the means by which we try to achieve that aim. First, an assumption is made that economic prosperity will equate to increased happiness and yet the Easterlin Paradox, which shows that economic prosperity is not linked to levels of happiness, has been recognised since the 1970s. Second, economic prosperity is not achieved by spending ever more hours with your nose to the grindstone. A study by Stanford University found that productivity drops off sharply for every hour worked above 50 hours in a week, and hours worked above 55 hours were essentially worthless in terms of productivity (1). Some estimate that workers are, on average, only productive for 3 hours per day (2). There is in fact much evidence that a shorter working week is more productive, as well as being better for your health (3).
The coronavirus pandemic seemed to offer an opportunity to reset. It forced changes in working practices and many people spent much of the first UK lockdown contemplating what was important in their lives and how their work-life balance could be better.
Home working was embraced by many and many people now see a future where work will be a blend of home and office based working – apparently offering the best of both worlds. But as we move to this new, more flexible future, are we about to make the same mistakes in different ways?
There is already some evidence emerging that home working is exacerbating the problem of long work hours. By utterly blurring the boundaries between home and work life it seems that home working actually results in a longer working week. With no commute, and the ‘office’ always just a few footsteps away, longer hours at the desk have already become the norm for many.
On the face of it this new flexible working seems to be a big stride forward for workers who want to take control of their lives and their working conditions, but it does not tackle the underlying problem and may actually exacerbate it. Until we allow people to work less, rather than just trying to make them content with the conditions in which they work more, we will continue to be unhappy, unproductive, and unwell.
References
1. http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf
2. https://traqq.com/blog/work-hours-vs-productivity-what-you-need-to-know/#:~:text=Average%20workers%20are%20usually%20productive%20for%20about%20three,beginning%20of%20your%20workday%20than%20at%20the%20end.
3. https://onlinemasters.ohio.edu/blog/benefits-of-a-shorter-work-week/