Wise or Otherwise?
Saturday, May 16th, 2009New survey results released by the Society for Human Resource Management says 70+% of American workers work through lunch, work overtime and take work home on the weekends.
And the motivation for logging all these hours doesn’t appear to be the result of some top-down mandate, but rather our own internal sense of what it takes to succeed. Only 21% said they worked extra hours because of pressure from an immediate supervisor, and only 12% attributed it to upper management.
So how do we rate our productivity? That’s what I’d like to hear from this 70% group. Are we generating all sorts of results during these 50+ hour weeks? Do we feel energized and creative at 2:00 after skipping our lunch break? Are we healthy and happy and stress free?
Or, are we marking time at our desks because the employee in the office the longest “must be” the most dedicated (a la George Costanza)? Are we wasting hours away in idle chat or non-productive tasks because we really do need those mental breaks?
Are we ravaging our free time, by dragging out our work day, accomplishing the same amount of work in more time thanks to the sheer inefficiency of exhaustion? And if so, why?
Perhaps, it’s a tragic case of escalation. Silent peer pressure, if you will. And if that’s the case, managers must take the lead and model a better way.
Posted by Jaime