Frustrated IT worker

The shackles of productivity

Blogs
(Source: Stockfresh)

2 July 2014

Billy MacInnesOver-worked? Stressed? Tired? Burned out? If you’ve answered yes to all of these questions it’s not a surprise. In today’s world, more and more people are working longer and longer hours. In many cases, they’re working for less and less as their earnings fail to keep track with the rising costs of living.

It’s no accident that the emergence of the trend for people to work more and be accessible outside their working hours coincides with the growing role of IT in their working lives. Do all those people reading work e-mails at 11pm on a Tuesday night or taking a work call in the kitchen at 7.30am ever wonder why technology hasn’t freed them to be more productive but in the same amount of time as back in the days when their predecessors worked 9-5 in the office?

Too often it seems technology has created more work for some people and taken all the work away from others. Flexibility has become another way of saying that employees are constantly available and accessible to their employers. In many cases, it has also become another way of saying ‘you’re fired’.

It would be wrong to blame technology itself for what is happening. As we all know, technology is an enabler. The problem at the moment is that it has, in the main, become an enabler for the employer rather than the employee. Even trends like mobility and BYOD are as much about the way work can be sent from the organisation to the employee wherever they are and on whatever device they are using, as they are about the worker’s ability to access work wherever he or she is and on whatever device he or she is using.

All of this is by way of preamble to some interesting comments from Prof John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health in the UK, calling on the standard working week to be reduced from five days to four to abolish what he dubbed ‘a maldistribution of work’.

Pressure, pressure, pressure
Prof Ashton said: “When you look at the way we lead our lives, the stress that people are under, the pressure on time and sickness absence, [work-related] mental health is clearly a major issue. We should be moving towards a four-day week because the problem we have in the world of work is you’ve got a proportion of the population who are working too hard and a proportion that haven’t got jobs.”

He argued that a four day week was needed so that people could enjoy their lives, have more time with their families and possibly start exercising on their extra day. He said working couples with children needed to be able to work in such a way to spend time together with their children. “It’s a nightmare,” he added.

The massive imbalance between those who are in work and those who aren’t was also an issue raised by the Professor. “My concern is that too many people are working too long hours and too hard, and too many people aren’t working at all. A large number of people are working crazy hours and a significant amount of people can’t get work,” he stated.

While many of Prof Ashton’s recommendations go against the grain of the reality of the world that exists in Ireland today, there must be many employees hoping they set a future yardstick for the world of work. They must also be hoping the role of technology changes to become an enabler for the brave new working world outlined by Prof Ashton, rather than a platform for an ever more demanding working world that eats further and further into their personal time.

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie