Employed people should not only be efficient, resilient and satisfied with their everyday work in the long term from an ergonomic point of view. It is also entirely in the interests of their personal health. Many employers offer various working time models to make it easier for their employees to combine work and private life. But despite all the flexibility that fluid working hours bring with them, one fact remains: Excessive workloads reduce productivity.
Opportunities for flexible working hours
The legal regulations currently stipulate regular working hours of 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. A minimum of 11 hours of rest between work phases is also usually specified. Ergonomics sees these framework conditions as a good time standard for healthy working conditions. The Working Time Act permits exceptions. Currently, up to 60 hours per week can be worked, even several weeks in a row. Such flexible working time specifications offer sufficient scope to strengthen or weaken the time sovereignty of employees. It is important that this leeway is not exploited to the detriment of the employees, but is designed in their favour. Otherwise there is a risk of negative health effects with far-reaching consequences.
Separate work and private life
Working from home is no longer unusual. Here it is easy for work and private life to be indistinguishable. This is at the expense of employee protection. It is almost indispensable for both parties that working hours are recorded correctly and fairly.
In Section 16 of the Labor Code regulations for time recording are fixed. Accordingly, employers are obliged to record overtime and keep the records for at least two years. an electronic one time tracking is a simple and fair way to fulfill these obligations. Employees can document the hours they have worked using an app on their smartphone, tablet or PC, regardless of whether they are on the road, working from home or at the company. If necessary, employers can even keep track of the team’s activities in real time. This makes it possible to intervene at an early stage when stress gets out of hand and working hours become too long.
Effects of long working hours
Employees who work long hours give up rest time every day and spend less time with their families or on non-work activities. Several workload studies have found that a healthy average working time is 8 hours a day. Long working hours are up to 10 hours a day or up to 48 hours a week, and excessive working hours are above the stated limits. These hourly reference values form the basis when long or excessively long working hours are discussed in this article.
Long and excessive working hours have a negative effect on health. Studies show, among other things, that headaches and body aches, dizziness and nausea as well as gastrointestinal problems are increasing. States of exhaustion, reduced sleep and low stress resistance also occur in connection with increased workload. Meta-studies, which include numerous studies on the subject of working hours and health, show that the risks of burnout, obesity, depression and alcohol abuse are increasing, and that heart disease and stroke are also increasing (sources: Banai and tamahoshi, 2014, Conway et al., 2017, Kivimöki and Kawachi, 2015, Theorell 2016 and Virtanen 2012)
In summary, it can be said that people who work long or excessively long hours are more likely to fall ill and are dissatisfied with the work-life balance.
frequency of accidents is increasing
In addition to the health disadvantages that result from excessive working hours, an increasing number of accidents can also be attributed to it. The risk of misjudgements, for example when driving vehicles, is increasing. The longer the working time exceeds 8 hours, the greater the risk of accidents at work. The frequency of accidents doubles after 12 hours compared to a regular 8-hour day.
Productivity and efficiency decrease
Accidents are often the result of reduced concentration and performance. Signs of fatigue often indicate this in advance. When cognitive performance drops, it is usually due to fatigue due to excessive workload. On the one hand, the drop in performance can be seen in the daily routine, on the other hand, it can also increase over the weeks and months. After just 5 days of working more than 8 hours, cognitive performance drops, with the type of activity influencing the intensity of the drop in performance. Those affected generally feel more tired and exhausted, productivity suffers.
Productivity is a key figure that plays an important role in economic terms. It stands for efficiency and effectiveness. Although it cannot be proven without a doubt that long working hours fundamentally worsen productivity, studies by Collewet and Sauermann (2017) show that it is very likely that long working hours do not increase productivity.
Social participation and motivation decrease
A direct consequence of long and excessively long working hours is the reduction in social participation. It is also true that long commutes result in additional work-related time. The overall recreational value sinks, private life begins to wither away. This has a negative effect on the work-life balance, the declining quality of which leads to an increased potential for conflict. Employees become dissatisfied in the long term, their motivation decreases and the tendency to take sick leave or to change employers increases.
Conclusion: Companies lose out due to long working hours
What superficially promises company growth actually leads to a dead end. Employed people who regularly work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week pay a high health price. This has a negative impact on companies in the long term. From today’s point of view, it is advisable to offer flexible working hours that enable the compatibility of work and private life, but do not exceed the hourly framework defined as healthy. Time recording systems, which can be used easily and at any time on different end devices without any significant effort, are an important tool for employers and employees. They help both sides to record working hours fairly and correctly and to maintain control.
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