5 Reasons Why Working Overtime Is Never A Good Idea

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Some employees assume working overtime can bring benefits to both employees and companies. They believe that working longer hours means will get more tasks done, getting more money or getting promoted quickly for the hard work. However, getting overtime can cause more problems than they are worth. Besides company will spend more cost to pay the overtime, studies show that too much work can lead to health and productivity problems.

Why you should stop working overtime?

#1 Physical Health

Long working hours mean long hours spent sitting in your office chair staring at your computer. Based on researchers at Columbia University Medical Centre, in their study published in Annals of Internal Medicine in September 2017, they found that employees who were sedentary for more than 13 hours a day were twice as likely die prematurely as those who were inactive for 11.5 hours. So, it means how dangerous long periods of sitting for our health. Another study carried out by researchers at University College London highlighted the increased risk of heart problems among those workers who put in regular overtime. According to their findings, the people who worked 55 hours or more per week were about 40 percent more likely develop atrial fibrillation in the following 10 years than those who kept 35-40 hours per week. It shows that long working hours are associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia, said lead researcher Professor Mika Kivimaki.

#2 Get Burnout

Burnout is a psychological term that refers to long-term exhaustion and diminished interest in work. Burnout has been assumed to result from chronic occupational stress (e.g. work overload). It has been proven that a serious burnout can cause person to completely lose interest in his/her passion. If your current job is your passion, it will destroy your love for it.

#3 Performance Affected

It is a natural phenomenon that the brain stops working after it is exploited more. The brain also gets tired and needs rest. When you work continuously and do not give rest to your brain, you get to see the poor results. This further leads to frustration and anger.

#4 Personal Life Affected

Working overtime will definitely make less time for personal life. It could lead you to neglect your friends and family, your significant other, and even your self-care time. Apart from the professional life, there also lies the personal life which demands equal attention. So, if you do not pay attention to your own self, one day you will realize that you are turning into what you never wanted or had dreamt. So, instead of working overtime, it’s better to spend some time for yourself.

#5 Harder to Make a Good Impression

There is nothing worse than having to hit an important meeting or presentation when you’re absolutely exhausted. Not only you are more likely to be unfocused and make simple mistakes, but your exhaustion also will probably be far more apparent than you think.

For the company, overtime is an expense, and its needs to be estimated, budgeted, and controlled. To minimize problems with overtime, HR department should keep an eye on both overall and individual overtime hours. They should also monitor absences to better understand of employees working hours are missing work and if the absences follow a pattern or cycle from year to year.

With the manual process, controlling overtime can be a difficult task for any company in today’s diverse working environment. Implementing a Time and Attendance System that offers all the benefits of time tracking, scheduling and HR functionality is essential for any business to save on staffing costs while increasing employee productivity and efficiency. Furthermore, it also enables your organisation to remain compliant with the Working Time Act.

Want to track overtime accurately with minimal effort? Try our automatic time attendance system.

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