Stress Directly Proportional to Overtime

07.16.09 |

As per the reports of Best Companies, the mastermind behind The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For lists, stress is directly proportional to the overtime an employee puts in.

The yearly research of leading organisations, conducted by Best Companies, revealed that more than 30% of the employees interviewed, put in up to 10 hours of overtime every week and almost 50% admitted that they did some overtime. Further, one in every three workers working over 10 hours in overtime on a weekly basis suffers from some sort of stress related problem.

The data unveiled is important because ‘wellbeing’ is one of the eight factors to measure employees’ engagement by their employers. Further, around 50% of the employees responding to the survey admitted that they felt exhausted at the end of the day, without even doing any overtime; and where overtime is taken in to account the percentage rises to 80% of the workers. One of the researches conducted by RSA Insurance unveiled the financial implications of stress at work, which it quantifies as losses to the tune of £673 million per year. The key to good people management is having a sound stress management system in place, which imparts training to managers in necessary skills in this regard; The Certificate in Personnel Practice (CPP) is the country’s most popular HR qualification - contact the experts at Workplace Law Training to find out about their range of accredited CIPD courses.

Founder and CEO of Best Companies, Jonathan Austin points out that companies and institutions that do not understand the importance of well-being of employees have to suffer problems later, whereas the companies that understand that employees play a very important part in their development ensure staff welfare at all costs. The companies that feature in the list prepared by Best Companies are actually those where the welfare of employee is deep rooted in their core values and principles and are not just another optional measure.