Croner Consulting, which questioned 13,679 HR professionals, found that employees are reluctant to take benefits fearing it may hinder their career prospects.
Employees are spending more time commuting and the number of working parents is on the rise. However, respondents are worried about taking advantage of perks such as flexible working hours, duvet days and teleworking, as they believe it may affect their future prospects.
Peter Etherington, helplines manager for Croner Consulting commented, “The survey reinforces the well known fact that we are the hardest working nation in Europe. In addition, the recent economic downturn has made it harder for employees to move between jobs and job security is at an all time low. Employees feel they must work even harder to move up the career ladder.
Employers perhaps should encourage employees to take advantage of any benefits on offer however Etherington suggested that not promoting perks is part of the UK’s business culture.
He continued, “It’s ironic that bosses on the one hand offer benefits, but are maintaining a culture where employees are too afraid to take them. There is a strong argument to say this is actually worse than offering no benefits.
Work place stress is also on the uprise according to Peter due to our current culture of long working hours , working through lunch and pressure from our colleagues.
Etherington concluded: “In the long run employees are actually better off taking advantage of flexible working arrangements than working themselves in to a situation where they are signed off work suffering from stress.”
7 Responses
Learning to work smarter?
As we all know change isn’t always welcome and this applies particularly in the workplace. Vested interests mix with old habits to create an inertia that is hard to overcome. Not only do we need to address this for improving the way we work, but also for improving the way we learn. Telecommuting, KM, e-learning are all elements in the Smartworking mix…
Wrong comparison — agreed
From an employee’s perspective, perhaps fewer hours and more benefits is a desirable goal. But that can be short-sighted. It can backfire if the result is an employer that is less competitive (and ultimately doomed) in an industry that is less competitive (and ultimately doomed) in an economy that is … well, you get the picture. Sustainable economic growth, booming employment and job security are dependent on increasing productivity relative to those companies or countries that compete with us. Technology can not not create a sustainable competitive advantage, but hard-working smart-working people can.
It’s not just the hours we put in at the office, but the hours we spend getting there and back, that create stress. If people need fewer away-from-home hours in their day, telecommuting can instantly provide them. UK companies often have an old-fashioned attitude, believing that if employees are not closely supervised they will slack off (maybe this becomes self-fulfilling). Yet telecommuting is rapidly becoming the the norm in many industries in the US and elsewhere, and it results in greater productivity and less employee stress.
Wrong comparison
Once again we talk about hours in the UK compared to Europe. Why don’t we compare ourselves with the Far East, particularly China, where most manufacturing jobs are currently being lost to. We seem to be obsessed with our position relative to the rest of Europe, and yet most of the other countries in Europe also have higher unemployment. Is the another statistic we would like to emulate?
Oops…
Thanks Alan for the note on the derivation of ‘raincheck’. I wasn’t using the term too literally but maybe we should ‘cry-off’ our current approach to work and come back when we have a better one.
What a ‘raincheck’ is.
As an aside to John Curran’s suggestion that we “take a raincheck” over how hard we do or don’t work. A “raincheck” isn’t any sort of check or checkup in the UK sense.
It’s An American baseball term. When the game is rained off you get a ‘raincheck’ or ‘rain ticket’ that allows you to come back tomorrow when the rain has stopped and the game resumes.
In our terms it’s a means of crying-off with an option to come back later. You’re not sure you want to proceed with something right now, so you ‘take a rain ticket’, to be able to come back to it later. There’s no ‘checking’ involved.
Hardworking versus Smartworking
If the statistics are to be believed it’s true that we have a long hours culture compared to the rest of Europe. However the statistics also show that the extra time we spend at work doesn’t lead to better productivity. We need to take a raincheck here and look at how we can improve our approach to work to both reduce artificial mechanisms of stress and improve what actually gets done. Competition is fierce and it’s going to get worse so we have to start Smartworking instead of simply working hard. Working flexibly can help here – how many people say that they can get so much more done when they spend a day working out of the office? It’s hard to break old habits but time is running out for UK PLC…
Workaholics? I guess it’s all relative.
Duvet days? The notion that we are “a nation of workaholics” is really stretching it, unless a workaholic is someone who is likely to have alcohol in their system while at work. Ah, those post-pub afternoon lethargies… I am a Brit currently working in America, and people look at you as if you are mad if you suggest leaving the building at lunchtime, let alone going out specifically to consume alcohol.
In my experience “the well known fact that we are the hardest working nation in Europe” is not a fact — it’s a distortion derived from some survey of official working hours. People in the UK may put more hours into work than counterparts in other European countries, but it’s the work you put into the hours that is the real measure of how hardworking you are.
I have had the privelege of managing companies in several European countries, England, the US and a couple of “third world” countries; and I have worked on extensive consulting projects in more than 30 countries around the world. With very few exceptions, the white collar workers that I have experienced in England are the least productive I have come across anywhere (I can’t speak for blue collar workers). This is true irrespective of place in the hierarchy or the type of business. If anything, the higher up the tree the less hard-working the employee. Europeans do generally have a better deal — shorter official working week, better pay and benefits, much better holiday allowance, great security. But as individuals they tend to be productive and totally focused when at work — and they put in all-nighters without hesitation when circumstances call for it. I have rarely been in an office in the UK that is not deserted by 5:30pm, even when there is a crisis on.
In the US people work intensively for very long hours, are not generally well paid, and get very little in the way of benefits or security. Typically, a mid-level employee would get ten days holiday a year, from which sick days are deducted. In many states employees can be fired without cause, without any notice or severance pay. And unemployment insurance (the dole) stops paying after 26 weeks, then you are on your own.
Maybe the lack of a safety net is what drives Americans to work so much harder than their colleagues across the Atlantic. But I suspect it is simply a cultural difference in work ethic.
Godfrey Parkin