TGI Friday: too much weekend working?

Picture credit: hiromy

We all need to look at our work schedules and see if we are doing ourselves more harm than good, by slogging away seven days a week.

As it so often seems to be unavoidable, perhaps we need to seriously think about completely restructuring our working week, or month, to restore some balance to our lives?

For many of us Friday lunchtime used to be the start of the weekend wind-down – a few quiet, or not so quiet, beers and a pub lunch with the rest of the team, followed by a leisurely return to the office for a couple of hours, before sloping off early. Some people even wore commemorative ties, proudly proclaiming POETS – “Push Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

what happened to the weekend?

I suppose some people still enjoy this relaxed approach to the weekend. But I know that many of us don’t get the chance these days, because the weekend doesn’t really exist anymore. For those of us involved in the business of change, Saturdays and Sundays have become integral parts of our working week – weekends are the prime-time opportunities for testing and implementing change.

So Friday afternoon has now become the time for last minute planning of the weekend’s activity. Saturday is often the day set aside for testing and implementing new systems, while Sunday is when we usually have either to commit the changes into production, or to roll-back our changes to restore the “old” systems/ data. And the cherry on the cake is that we can’t take Monday off – because we have to be around in case things go pear-shaped when everybody else starts using the new system!

And it’s not just the odd weekend. In many organisations this is the routine for every weekend, not simply once in a while.

If we are not careful, though, the consequences of this approach can be extremely debilitating on key members of staff, especially those who consistently perform the unseen, sometimes “heroic,” out-of-hours shifts that are required to make sure that the sanctity of the regular working week is preserved for their more fortunate colleagues.

It’s not better to burn out than to fade away

Sure, we can all handle the odd couple of 17 hour sessions, every now and again – but not week in, week out, especially on top of our “normal” hours from Monday to Friday. And yet it does happen. I have seen some people almost driven into the ground, by excessive weekend working over prolonged periods.

Of course, contracts of employment may well provide for adequate remuneration and/ or time off in lieu to compensate.

Even so, this is not always successful because the local “culture” may well mitigate against the opportunity to actually take the time off due and to recuperate properly. But I feel very strongly that we need to be more aware of this phenomenon and to take positive action to prevent the harm done to our staff, ourselves and to our families by losing our supposedly “free time” on a regular basis. Health, morale and relationships are being exposed to serious risk, through the expectations being made of us.

In the long run, excessive weekend working is also counter-productive to effective performance so our employers will inevitably suffer too.

Is it any wonder then that workplace stress has become a significant factor?