A prevalent belief is that workers who work more than 60 hours a week are considered strong achievers. However, a study showed that Japanese workers, prone to working overtime, delivered less valuable work than their counterparts from other industrialized countries who worked 40 hours a week.
Despite these findings, many business owners fear that limiting work hours may diminish their employees’ drive to compete and lower their productivity. This fear can’t be farther from the truth, though, knowing that overworking may cause exhaustion, lack of focus needed for high-quality work, and disrupted work/life balance. This said the amount of work accomplished within set work hours may contribute more to overall productivity than the amount of time spent at work.
Here, you’ll find out why it’s crucial to shorten work hours and give your employees a break. You’ll also see how an advanced employee tracker can help you make most of their time, helping them be more productive and time-efficient without having to work long hours.
Table of Contents
Working Overtime May Result in Hidden Costs
Working overtime may lead to costly mistakes and accidents that may affect your productivity revenue. This risk is especially prominent for those working in light industrial environments. This also rings true for those engaged in jobs requiring sharp focus and attention to detail. If you tend to overwork doing these jobs, you can count on spending even more time at the office fixing mistakes you’ve made due to poor focus and exhaustion.
Instead of encouraging working overtime, try to create a time-efficient workload distribution plan using digital time tracking solutions. Namely, this advanced software will show you how your employees spend their time at work, identifying those who may be overwhelmed compared to those who may have more time on their hands. You can use this information to redelegate tasks and projects, distributing workload equally to prevent some of your team members from overworking and causing unexpected costs.
Overworking Frequently Leads to Burnout
Besides making costly mistakes, employees prone to working overtime may seriously harm their productivity and health, becoming the victims of burnout. One of the obvious signals of burnout is exhaustion accompanied by lack of motivation, and disengagement. All of these may run down employees’ productivity and the overall success of your organization.
Luckily for you, an efficient productivity tracking tool will provide you with detailed insight into employees’ performance, allowing you to identify the reasons for decreased productivity and react on the spot. You can use this feedback and have an honest one-on-one conversation with your employees to listen to their concerns and provide the necessary support to help them overcome serious issues and get back on track with their work.
What’s more important, you can use track records to show your employees how to use their time effectively and improve their time management so that they won’t need to work overtime to achieve set goals.
Foster People-First Culture, Focusing on Efficiency
Many managers tackle low-productivity issues by laying off underperformers, forcing remaining employees to overwork to achieve set goals. This practice is almost always counterproductive. It creates a vicious cycle of overworked employees, failing to fulfil their potential, having to work even more to improve performance.
Instead of reaching out for extreme measures, try offering additional training to those struggling with specific aspects of their jobs. Furthermore, try to focus on self-care more to prevent employees from overworking and burnout.
You can start by encouraging them to take frequent short breaks to stretch, take a walk and re-energize. You can also create different wellness programs focused on promoting employees’ self-care.
Final Words
Working overtime isn’t correlated with high productivity and quality outcomes. Quite the contrary, it may cause frustration and tiredness that may severely affect employees’ performance.
By shortening work hours, and showing your employees how to use their time effectively, you’ll ensure high productivity and eliminate the negative effects of overworking.
