Why More Workers Are Putting in Extra Hours After the Workday - Your Money Briefing

Wall Street Journal

4 days ago

Thanks to a growing number of meetings, messages, and actual work, more employees are finding it difficult to log off after regular work hours . Wall Street Journal reporter Ray A. Smith joins host Ariana Aspuru to discuss how to get your time back.
Full Transcript
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Ariana Aspuru: Here's Your Money Briefing for Wednesday, June 25th. I'm Arianna Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. A recent study from Microsoft showed that the average worker gets 117 emails and 153 chats per day. The ping after ping, combined with back-to-back meetings and a cooling job market, means that more of your workday is bleeding into the evening.
Ray A. Smith: They're almost doing three jobs instead of one. They're doing a lot of jobs beyond what's in their job description. And it's a lot because of layoffs, but also it's driven by this idea that companies are really trying to be more efficient.
Ariana Aspuru: We'll hear from Wall Street Journal reporter Ray A. Smith about why some workers are burning that midnight oil and how you can reclaim some of your personal time. That's after the break. The classic nine-to-five is now looking like the nine-to-long-after-five or even later for some workers. Wall Street Journal reporter Ray A. Smith joins me to talk about it. Ray, what's causing this now?
Ray A. Smith: There are a couple of reasons. One is just because companies have been slowing their hiring of new employees. And so that leaves a lot more work for current or existing employees to do. That just gives them an increased workload. And so they're having to catch up off hours, whether it's evenings or weekends. Another reason is their days are typically stacked with back-to-back meetings. So they barely have time to do the actual work that they're supposed to be doing. And so they almost have no choice but to get that work done at night or early in the morning or on weekends. And then a third reason is we're all expected, in this global world, where companies are international and workers are in different time zones, we're all expected to be on all the time.
Ariana Aspuru: And we've seen a shrinking white-collar job market for the past few years. And we've seen lots of companies conducting layoffs, and that has to add on to that pressure to perform. How has that impacted what's on workers' actual plates during their workday?
Ray A. Smith: What it's meant for employees and their workday and their workloads is just that they have more on their plates. They're almost doing three jobs instead of one. They're doing a lot of jobs beyond what's in their job descriptions, and they're not getting a promotion or an increase in pay for that. They're just being tasked with more and more. It's just an increasing workday and increasing workload. And it's a lot because of layoffs, but also it's driven by this idea that companies are really trying to be more efficient. They're saying, "We don't need as many employees to get this work done, and we're not going to hire any more employees." So the employees that are left there are just tasked with doing a lot more work. And companies really feel, at this point in time, when the white-collar job market, as you alluded to, is softer, that they have the power to ask more of their employees. Because what are the employees going to do? They're not going to be able to just up and quit.
Ariana Aspuru: How does this leave employees feeling at the end of the day, whether it's at 5:00, 8:00, or sometimes 10:00 PM?
Ray A. Smith: Employees have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, a lot of us thought we'd be able to, after COVID, have more work-life balance. And we heard a lot of employers talk about more work-life balance. And now employees are feeling a little betrayed, like that wasn't true. And so, there's this feeling that "What happened to all this talk about work-life balance? Now I'm back to feeling burned out." We saw mentions of burnout rise 32% year-over-year during the first quarter. That's to their highest levels in almost a decade. And that's from a Glassdoor report. So, it's just employees feeling really burned out and resentful and also feeling like this is unsustainable.
Ariana Aspuru: How does the level that you're at in the company impact the amount of time that you're working outside of that nine-to-five, like an entry-level versus a senior-level employee?
Ray A. Smith: The manager sets the tone. And so, if a manager is on all the time, whether it's through osmosis or just a feeling that if your boss is on, you should be on too, there's this expectation that you're going to follow your boss's lead or your manager's lead.
Ariana Aspuru: And I want to turn to what actions workers feel like they can do. I'm wondering, in your reporting, did you hear from people who were telling their managers about their off-hours work, and what are the possible risks or implications in doing that?
Ray A. Smith: In some cases, some workers that I talked to told me that they have tried to talk to their bosses or their managers about what is unreasonable or to set expectations or even to set boundaries. But they acknowledged that they were concerned that when they brought that up, it sounded like they couldn't handle the workload and they were afraid of them being perceived as not being up to the task. Other employees told me they've tried, in some cases, on their digital calendars to make it clear when they are busy. So they'll block time on their calendars so that they can't be invited to meetings or interrupted for meetings. That's one strategy that some people are using to try to at least limit the amount of meetings they get called into so they can focus on work.
Ariana Aspuru: There's a line in your story that really struck out to me, Ray. A senior vice president who works remotely in the Seattle area said, it just needs to be the exception and not the rule for me when talking about working outside of hours. What other tips or techniques did you hear from people about how to streamline your work so that working outside of hours is the exception?
Ray A. Smith: You make a choice to say, "Okay, I'm going to spend an hour or two just going over emails. I may not even respond to them, but I'm just going to look at them just to see what I missed. And I can either schedule send a response or just deal with it in the morning." That's another hack, giving yourself a limit, saying, "I'm only going to do this for a half an hour," or, "I'm only going to do this for 45 minutes and that's it."
Ariana Aspuru: That's WSJ reporter Ray A. Smith. And that's it for Your Money Briefing. I'm Ariana Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. We had production help from Coleman Standifer. This episode was produced by me, with supervising producer Melony Roy. Thanks for listening.