Labor market considerations. There are three ways to fill this eight-hour gap in the weekly coverage: Hire part-time employees. Finding and retaining good part-time employees is always challenging. Part-time positions tend to have higher turnover rates, so more management time will be spent keeping the positions filled. Many part-time employees have limited availability, making it more difficult to fit them into the schedule.
Employ an additional crew. This is an expensive solution, since the employer would hire an additional hour crew for only eight uncovered hours. While the employer can schedule the remaining 32 hours for other purposes, such as absence coverage relief , training or maintenance, if these other functions are not needed on a regular basis, hiring an additional crew is not the most efficient solution.
Use overtime. The most popular option is to schedule the four crews to work an average of 42 hours a week. Although this requires paying a small amount of overtime 5 percent to each employee, this is perceived to be easier and is typically less expensive than the other two options. Workload fluctuations In many industries, demand for products or services is not constant throughout the year; seasonal or periodic variations may occur. There are four common ways to adapt to these seasonal busy periods: Stockpile product during slow periods.
Stockpiling product works well for organizations whose products have sufficiently long shelf lives. Even then, however, having sufficient inventory available to meet every surge in demand is not always possible. Stockpiling is not an option for companies that provide services rather than products.
Hire temporary employees during the busy periods. Employing temporary help is a good solution if the busy staffing period requires additional low-skilled staff and does not require lengthy training. It is costly, though, to invest training resources in workers who are with the organization for only a short time. Maintain enough full-time staff to cover the peak workload periods.
Hiring full-time regular employees to have adequate staffing during the peak workload periods can result in overstaffing when the workload declines. Unless excess employees are laid off during slower periods, an employer must pay all employees throughout the year.
The cost of overstaffing adds up quickly, making this option the most expensive of the four. Requiring overtime hours from existing regular employees is a popular choice to manage peaks in work demand. Overtime provides employers with immediate access to a pool of workers with the skills and training to do the job, and it is not as expensive as it first appears.
Even though overtime involves paying a 50 percent premium, paying short-term overtime to fully trained employees is not much more expensive than the fully loaded cost of straight time for new employees. Employee benefits such as insurance and vacations are usually paid based on straight-time hours worked, which can increase the average wage by 30 percent to 40 percent or more.
There is also the cost of hiring and training new staff. For highly skilled workers, these benefits and training expenses can be substantial. Staff variations Even when the workload is constant, occasions may arise when not enough staff is available to do the work.
Labor market considerations Many organizations offer overtime to attract and retain employees. Problems with Excessive Overtime Although overtime can help employers and may be valued by some employees, there are limits to the amount of overtime that is beneficial. High overtime, especially when it continues for an extended time period, has several potential drawbacks: An overtime-dependent workforce.
Safety and quality issues. Lower productivity. Overtime dependency When overtime levels are constantly high, employees may become dependent on that additional income as a source of their regular pay. Safety and quality Research on the relationship between long hours of work and employee safety and quality is inconclusive. Absenteeism Reduced sleep from prolonged high overtime levels will eventually adversely affect employee health and work attendance.
Productivity A number of studies have attempted to define the relationship between hours of work and productivity. Corrective Measures To avoid problems that can occur when high levels of overtime continue for extended periods, employers should regularly monitor overtime and absences. Use of overtime It is important to keep track of both overall averages and individual overtime hours.
Absences As with overtime, it is best to track both overall averages and individual absences. Workload Does the organization's workload fluctuate from week to week?
Policies and procedures HR professionals may want to periodically review the organization's overtime distribution policies and procedures for fairness and to protect against problems such as excessive overtime for individual workers. The following areas should be examined: Mandatory overtime. How much of the overtime is voluntary versus mandatory? A high proportion of forced overtime means employees cannot plan their lives away from work, which can lead to poor morale.
How much lead time is given when notifying workers about mandatory overtime? Limited or no advance warning of overtime is one of the most frequent complaints from shift workers.
See Can an employer require its employees to work overtime? Selection criteria. What criteria are used when choosing who gets the overtime? Using seniority may seem fair, but it can cause resentment among junior personnel. Are there other reasonable criteria, such as attendance, training or performance that employees would perceive as more equitable?
Abuse potential. Does the policy for covering absences inadvertently encourage employees to play games with their sick time and overtime? For example, one week an employee calls in sick so that another employee gets held over for coverage and receives overtime pay; then they reverse roles the following week or month.
Pension incentives. Does the organization's retirement plan encourage employees to increase their earnings in the last two or three years of employment? This may result in senior employees who are approaching retirement taking all the overtime they can get to boost their pensions.
Shift length. The method for distributing overtime depends on the shift length. With eight-hour shifts, employees are held over or brought in early to cover an open shift. Splitting the open shift is preferable to holding someone over for the entire shift and making him or her work 16 hours straight. With hour shifts, employees must come to work on a day off. Sometimes, especially with long-break schedules, it can be hard to encourage employees to sacrifice a day off. If the organization must meet federal standards on the number of days off such as in nuclear power plants, air traffic control or certain chemical production facilities , managers may have limited flexibility to required overtime.
Considerations such as these may limit an employer's ability to rely on overtime, dictating the need to hire relief personnel.
Another tactic that can help with absences and temporary workload increases is cross training. Once you know the reasons, you can take necessary steps to cut the negative impact of overtime work, thus, creating work culture that is healthy for both employer and employees. Without further ado, here are 4 common reasons employees work long hours.
As written by Erin L Kelly on her book Overload , regular work hours might not be enough for employees to finish everything on their plate, thus, they stay up late to finish them. Especially in a peak season like a new product launch or vast recruitment, overtime seems unavoidable. To prevent this: HR can provide flexibility in the workplace. Flexibility does not only help employees enjoy their working hours, said Kelly, it also helps improve productivity. Yet, flexibility alone might not be enough when it comes to peak season, thus, HR is encouraged to recruit hourly worker to help meet work demand.
Mandatory overtime, also referred to as forced overtime, is when an employer requires employees to work more than their regularly scheduled hour workweek without the approval from employees.
This high proportion of forced overtime sometimes leads to poor morale and higher stress in employees as they do not willingly want to involve in this rule. Assuming that the employer is paying for working for long hours, it is a straight way to get a bigger paycheck. Depending on the legal framework, the wage for additional time can be either regular one or higher than paid usually. Taking additional hours of work can be also a way to get more days off — it is common for companies to allow employees to take free hours in exchange for working overtime.
Assuming there is an hour of overtime every day, the employee gets an additional day off every two weeks. Depending on personal goals or preferences it can be more beneficial to work longer hours only to take a longer break — for example for a prolonged exotic trip, hiking in the wild, or basically anything else. The main challenge with working is that most jobs today are done in a sedimentary position, in front of a computer screen.
Staying in this position for an hour a day longer appears innocent, especially if one is going to rest with Netflix on a couch.
The research done on Columbia University shows that staying in the same position for prolonged hours can be as harmful to the overall health as smoking.
Working for late hours is rarely healthy except you are a personal trainer — lucky you! The late-worker is considered to be hardworking obviously. Also, employers value the flexibility that is shown by staying late. Also, working for long hours is an opportunity to polish skills and gain new experiences.
In the end, it is not about how many years one was working in the industry or a particular position, but how his or her skill will support the company. Working overtime can bring years of experience squeezed in a much shorter time.
For a price of course. The cardiovascular devastation done by the sedimentary lifestyle can be nothing when compared to the impact working overtime has on mental health. According to the research published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , people working overtime were more vulnerable to suffer from depression and anxiety. Also, people working overtime suffer from greater stress associated with the work. Interestingly, the research shows that taking just a bit over time can be actually beneficial for mental health, yet the number of hours worked cannot be excessive and taken for a prolonged time.
There are multiple occupations where there is a direct correlation between the job delivered and the effect. A copywriter, a graphic designer, or a software developer are among the best examples — in fact a good manager cares not if the job has been delivered an hour before the deadline, or it has been done for a week as long as the project is delivered on time.
Yet there are many jobs that are done through a specific time — the employee gets paid for an endless job of accounting or analysis for instance. Considering that, working longer results in more job delivered — yet another point where the paradigm of overtime meets with a common intuition. Companies value employees who are productive — they deliver value the end-client looks for.
There are only 24 hours every day and people can do nothing with it. With some time required to sleep, lost in commuting assuming the work in the office , required to do some day-to-day unavoidable chores, the only time to sacrifice is a personal time that would have been spent with family, for a hobby, relax or basically anything one will.
Of course, many people love their work, so spending one or two hours overtime in the office is not that painful but on the other hand — life is not only about working. Working overtime comes with several risks yet delivers significant benefits. Assuming that the key element is kept — the hours are paid accordingly.
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