The problems of ‘desk-time’ workplace culture

In countries all across the world, employees are working in places with a “desk-time” culture. This is the name given to the well-known phenomenon of a workplace culture where employees feel like they need to stay beyond their contracted hours.

79% of the UK workers surveyed spend their days in this kind of environment, according to a new survey from MAXIS Global Benefits Network, and in total UK workers spend just over 17 extra hours per month in their workplace.

The main positive viewpoints of extended time at the desk are that it demonstrates the employee is loyal and hard-working. However, often from the employee’s point of view this is not the case.

Nearly a third of the surveyed employees who work in that kind of environment admitted that they just rearranged their workload and spread it out over the extra time, rather than dealing with more tasks in that time. A fifth of those surveyed said that the expectation of working over their contracted hours made them feel demotivated, and more than a fifth believe the practice has a negative impact on their mental health or physical health.

This means that as well as losing potential productivity, companies with these sorts of policies may be losing money from a higher rate of illness and stress-related absences.

12% of employees who work in this workplace culture stated that the expectation of working longer hours can lead to people who do not do the unofficial extra time being seen as lesser workers than their colleagues. It can become all about time recorded on the clock, and not about the quality or even quantity of work.

If hard-working employees who go home at the “official” times see less productive or less skilled people getting promoted ahead of them, with managers praising their ‘dedication’ because they regularly stay late, then they may become discouraged and disillusioned. This may lower their productivity, or it may even result in their looking to leave and move to a company with a better method of measuring productivity.

Dr. Leena Johns, Head of Health & Wellness at MAXIS Global Benefits Network, said, “All organisations should look to create a nurturing and supportive environment that encourages productivity. It is important that managers distinguish between employees simply sitting at their desks and working harder. They need to measure real productivity and output.

“A strong workplace culture can help motivate employees and deliver improved financial performance, with a measurable increase in revenue. Unhealthy or stressed employees are a cost in terms of decreased productivity, rapid staff turnover, increased healthcare costs and absenteeism. There are a number of factors that impact workplace culture, from the physical environment of the office to the benefits and corporate wellness programmes offered by the employer, all of which have the potential to foster a healthier and more productive workforce.”

Source

Here at Time and Attendance UK, we regularly stress that it is not just enough to collect data on your employees’ time and attendance, but that in order to maximise its usefulness you should analyse your data. Are there patterns? What do they suggest about your workplace culture? A time and attendance system is a tool, and you can use it in many different ways.

For example, clocking data will show you when your employees are entering and exiting the building.

You could choose to focus only on ensuring that core hours are adhered to, or you could look at employees who regularly stay late or arrive early. There are many potential reasons for this which can be addressed by management to create a tighter, happier, more productive workforce.

• Do they find the commute traffic more convenient at that time of day, but haven’t realised that they are allowed to request flexible time?
• Do they find it difficult to concentrate at certain times during the day, and have reshuffled their workload to account for this?
• Do they have too much work on their plate, and are struggling to fit it all in?
• Do they fail to manage their time and workload effectively during the day, leading to a frantic race to get it all done in the evening?

You can see that identifying and solving these sorts of problems can take a good deal of human effort, and as a result many companies do not want to invest their time and people in this way. But with mental health problems a huge and still increase reason for sickness absences, it absolutely pays for companies to start seeing the people behind the numbers.

Our WinTA.NET system makes it easy for you to start examining your time and attendance data.

• Absences and lateness can be automatically emailed to you
• Absences can be given specific codes, and set to trigger various responses or warnings as required
• Absence entitlements are shown in easy-to-read colourful graphical formats, so that there is no confusion over different employees with different numbers of permitted annual leave
• Inbuilt report wizard makes it easy to edit templates into what you need, while advanced users can make use of the fully customisable report designer
• Reports can be printed, emailed, published online or generated in a range of widely-used formats, including Excel and PDF
• Access to the relevant data can be strictly segregated by job role, so that managers can only see their team’s clockings, for example, or so that a recruitment advisor doesn’t gain access to everyone’s information automatically just by being a member of the HR department.

For more information on our fully integrated time and attendance system, which can be operated by either RFID smart cards or employee fingerprints, please get in touch today.