Overtime- Is It Necessary? Experts Say No!
Although overtime may satisfy market demands, it is often associated with high levels of stress, burnout, and other health problems among employees. Studies have also proven that an individual can devote only a maximum of three hours of productive work a day. Any work beyond that does not increase productivity. Therefore, you should never let your employees work overtime even when there is plenty of work to be completed.
The six methods mentioned in this article will help you decide better strategies to prevent your employees from overworking. In order to improve standards of work, you should understand the reasons that force them to work overtime. Focusing on the real reasons can help both employers and employees develop productive work culture.
Reasons Employees Work Overtime And Ways To Avoid It
Overtime is often caused by heavy workloads and employees’ needs to meet supervisor expectations. Many employees find the regular working hours inadequate to complete their routine tasks, leading to overtime. Some employers also ask their employees to work overtime, especially during peak seasons. All these unintentional work extensions can lead to deteriorating employee morale and add to the stress.
Employee overtime is a concern for organizations that wish to be productive. Here are six fool-proof methods that can help reduce employee overtime.
No mandatory overtime rules
Unfortunately, ‘overtime culture’ is widely prevalent within organizations. Employers themselves tend to overwork by exceeding their regular working hours. This might inadvertently encourage their employees to follow the same path. If you are an employer who works overtime, make sure that this does not become a norm in your organization.
It would be best to consider talking to employees who spend longer than their regular working hours at the office. Make them understand that over time can increase their possibilities of burnout and disengagement.
Employ smart tools to automate mundane tasks
Employees often have to deal with many administrative and manual tasks that might consume their significant working hours. This may include reading and answering emails every day or scheduling meetings. It is now possible to free up the regular work hours by using AI tools to automate these rote tasks.
AI tools allow managers to host meetings and update status on online project boards. Also, tools like employee work monitoring software help track the work status of each employee and share the updates with the reporting manager. Automated tools like employee training and onboarding programs have considerably simplified the HR process in the organization. Equipping your organization with AI tools can immensely increase your efficiency.
Identify the overtime patterns.
You can use employee monitoring tools to identify the overtime pattern of the employees. Set alerts to track employee working hours to schedule their work accordingly. If the tool indicates that an employee has reached their work hours limit, you can adjust their schedules and thus, avoid overtime.
Cross-train your employees
The best-skilled employee or the one with the most experience will likely handle maximum tasks in an organization. This dependency can collapse the entire system because if they stop working, the business might halt. The employee is also likely to burn out during the entire process.
Companies must ensure that responsibilities don’t fall on a single hand but are spread across the team. Cross-training employees is a perfect solution to tackle this challenge.
Introduce flexible schedules
Many employees find it hard to be productive at specific schedules or a fixed location. And this has become one of the biggest reasons why companies are sporadically adopting remote working. A flexible schedule allows the employees to work according to their preferences and utilize their time efficiently. This reduces the possibility of overtime and keeps the employees in their best health. Employers can also save money by reducing their office maintenance costs and commuting charges.
Improve your staffing
Often, overtime is inevitable when there is a demand for more labour or when the employee’s schedule is not optimized. The profit earned is negligible if your employees are inappropriately scheduled and are asked to work overtime to cover the increased labour demand.
While increasing the number of employees would be a better solution in this scenario, hiring costs can be a problem for mid-level companies. With smart scheduling, you can ensure that your staff is properly scheduled and not overworked.
The methods mentioned above can help you prevent low productivity due to increased overtime. Methods like capping the overtime limits and establishing an overtime policy can also yield good results.
