Time Management – are you Working Late Tonight?

According to statistics done in United Kingdom, one third of workers will stay in their office until at least 8pm and the trend of working late is growing every years. Why is it so? Below are some of the causes of this problem.

1. “I want it now” culture.
It is quite common “I want it now” culture in today society where fast service is paramount. Every company or organization is trying to provide the fastest service possible or else they will lose out the customers to their competitors. In order to fulfill this requirement, the management starts asking their employees to work late.

2. Different time zone businesses.
Today a lot of companies are serving international market and due to different time zones, some of the servicing staffs have to stay back late to cater for the business.

3. Impress their boss.
Some staffs want to impress their boss by showing their hardworking attitudes, with the hope they can get better promotion in future.

4. Startup organization
It is quite common to work longer hours for a new startup organization in the beginning but as time progresses, it should normalize to normal office hour.

5. Handling Crisis
You will work late when handling crisis or fire-fighting but it should be occasional if the company is practising proper crisis management handling technique.

6. Meeting strict deadline
Meeting deadline is quite a common excuse for working late but that it should be a passing phase and should not create big impact if you plan properly.

7. Workaholic
Workaholic is a man of his word, dependable and dreamed by most employers. However, workaholic is not so good, as he/she is so preoccupy with the work till late hours until neglecting his/her other interests and personal/family life.

Working late has serious consequences to personal health, relationship with family and friends. For example:

1. Family breakup.
Spouses are concern and feel frustrated with working late workers. The existence of this acronym, HOOTOWL (Husband Out Of Town Or Working Late), proves how much stress women are facing. This may lead to family break up and divorce.

2. Burn-out and stress
When you are burn-out, you will start experience insomnia, loss of appetite and stress. This can lead to hypertension, ulcers and mental break down if this is continuing on. Tell me is working late worth it?

3. Productivity drop.
Employees’ productivity level drops when they are tired and overworked. We tend to make more mistakes when our brain is tired as we cannot concentrate. This may lead to staff resignation, retention and recruitment problems, which will create problem to the employers eventually.

We cannot deny that work is important in our life as we need to earn money to eat and live. However, work is not the only important thing in our life as we have other aspects that we need to develop, examples, personal, family and social. According to research, 85 percent of your successful life will come from happy relationships with other people. Therefore, the key is to reduce working hours and spend more quality time with your personal life, family and friends.

The main objective of working late is to get things done on time for the company. Looking at the above mentioned causes of working late, most of these problems can be solved if we learn to practise proper time management techniques. For example, learn to say NO and stop pleasing others can reduce a lot of your needs to work late. If you always practise proper planning, you can reduce the impact of crisis or deadline, even if it is a startup company. Good time management techniques can also double your productivity and subsequently increase your income.

“Design quality of time at work and quantity of time at home”