People tolerate it – to an extent. Respondents consider one day a week working late and 29 minutes overtime “acceptable.”
Too much more may bum you out. The results of a study published in PLoS ONE in 2012 suggest that people who regularly work more than 11-hour days had over twice the chances of developing major depression, compared to employees who worked about eight hours a day.
A full 82% of respondents were asked, or pressured, by a manager to work late. Of those who felt “pressure,” to work late, 69% felt that their job was at risk if they didn’t do it.
Work smarter, not longer?
You may not even perform your best working late. According to a study, it’s easier to get stressed in the evening, because your body releases less cortisol – the body’s stress hormone – in the evening, as opposed to the morning.
The culture of working overtime slides into home life. Respondents said working late caused them to break promises to their spouse (56%), friend (55%), or child (48%). Because of working late:
- 66% spent less time spent with family
- 61% spent less time spent with spouse
- 53% spent less leisure time at home
Researchers at Cornell University found that 10% of employees working more than 50 hours a week had serious issues at home. That percentage rose to 30% when they worked more than 60 hours.
Working late had a negative effect on the emotional well-being of 57% of workers, and the physical well-being of 54% of them.
A well-known study following over 10,000 civil servants in London found that overtime work is bad for the heart – people who worked three or more hours longer than a seven-hour day had a 60% higher risk of heart-related problems such as “death due to heart disease, non-fatal heart attacks, and angina.”
Of course, you don’t even want to know what terrible overtime-related malady they have in Japan: karoshi, or death from overwork.
