It’s no secret that the UK does some of the longest office hours in Europe. And just last week, we saw ‘Work your proper hours day’, an awareness day created by the TUC to address the issue with overtime the UK is currently facing. According to the TUC, the average UK employee works an additional 42 working days each year, for free.
Overtime is a known problem to those in the HR industry, especially within SME businesses. It’s a key cause for burn-out and reduced productivity levels among workers. Combine that with the growing trend of presenteeism in offices around the UK, and it’s clear we have something of a crisis on our hands. However, the issue is simply workers putting in more hours than they should, it’s often a sign of inefficient management and resourcing, which can lead to workers getting fed up and quitting their jobs, leaving senior management with high turnover and low engagement in their workforce
HR departments of UK SMEs have the skills and knowledge to fight this problem, and play a crucial part in balancing workload on all levels and ultimately reducing overtime, but it’s critical they have the time and resource to achieve this. As a basis, these key steps can help HR departments reverse the overtime crisis.
Assess the situation
In most cases, overtime at work is not solely caused by one thing, but is a result of various components. Of course different industries have different workloads, and these vary depending on the time of month or year, but without a clear and detailed understanding of why employees are working overtime more regularly, and who is doing it, businesses and HR managers will have difficulties tackling the issue. If you don’t naturally log hours, or monitor workloads, trial this for a period of time, asking employees to specify how much time they spend and most importantly, on what.
Logging hours might seem like an additional task on everyone’s already long to-do-lists, but without identifying the current workloads in a business, it is impossible to find the root cause and tackle it. There are many things that can cause unnecessary overtime; high administration levels, demanding clients, excessive meetings, lack of communication and inefficient resourcing.
Fight presenteeism
Back in the day, people clocked in and out of their workplace at set times, but this simply isn’t the case for many roles today. While plenty of SMEs across industries encourage flexible working, there are many that still struggle to fight the belief that being at your desk is crucial to meeting deadlines and hitting targets.
Presenteeism is a significant issue for SMEs in the UK, as workers continue to turn up while sick or stay late to prove to colleagues and senior leaders that they are hardworking. Research from recruitment firm Robert Half conducted earlier this year, suggested that 71% of UK business leaders regularly witness presenteeism among their employees.
HR departments and business leaders must take immediate action, and for this, culture is crucial. HR can be the basis to create and nurture a trusting and understanding work culture that encourages employees to do their work in a way that best suits them, rather than simply wasting time at their desk.
Provide tools for more efficiency
HR departments need to have the capacity, and time, to minimise overtime. This can vary from growing and improving learning and development programs, to upskilling workers, to distributing work through departments more effectively, ensuring that teams are optimised to tackle their daily work in the most productive way possible.
Workers who don’t have the basis or training to tackle their daily tasks, or are spending hours teaching themselves things, can be wasting valuable hours through no fault of their own.
The issue of overtime in SMEs will not be solved overnight, but for businesses who are keen to minimise its prevalence, the HR department is vital in solving the problem. Businesses, particularly SMEs, need to make sure that their HR teams are supported, and have the capacity to initiate and move long-term changes forward. In reality, many HR teams simply don’t have the time to tackle this. They themselves are stretched with administration tasks, communication bureaucracy and data processing eating into their day.
By minimising HR teams’ admin with automation and smoother and more efficient processes to free up their time, businesses can trust on HR to reduce their business’s overtime.
