The long-hours culture rules the IT community to the detriment of
us all, argues Colin Beveridge. So whatever happened to the
European Time Directive?
Aren't we all supposed to be good little Europeans these days?
If so, then why are so many of us apparently quite happy to break
one of the few EU regulations most likely to be of direct benefit
to us?
Now I am not talking about straight bananas, or selling monkey nuts
by the kilo, instead of the quarter pound. My concern today is
about the European Working Time Directive, which was an extremely
well intentioned piece of Euro-legislation.
Very well intentioned it may have been but it has been very well
ignored by almost everyone in the IT community, at least in my
experience.
If you can remember, this was a measure carefully designed to
prevent unscrupulous employers from exploiting the goodwill of
their staff by imposing an obligation to work excessively long
hours. It came into force on 1 October 1998 and, among other
things, it should have limited our working weeks to less than 48
hours, over any seven-day period.
Since then, I have not encountered any IT shop that has implemented
a regime for compliance with the directive. In fact, I have, more
often, seen the exact opposite pattern of behaviour develop - more
and more IT staff are now regularly working even longer hours than
they used to, generally for no additional reward.
I know that long hours in the IT industry, slaving over hot
keyboards until the wee small hours of the morning is, by no means,
a new phenomenon - it has been going on for many years.
As
 | | "Overcommitment leads to
disappointment, the shortest route I know to losing the confidence
of both staff and customers alike." | | | | | |
| | Colin Beveridge | | |
|
|
a junior programmer, twenty-something years ago, I can remember
upsetting my manager at WMS by answering the telephone with a
cheery "Wakefield, Marley and Scrooge" and volunteering to fetch
the coal for the office stove.
I digress, but only slightly.
Nowadays, even in companies where the corporate culture is fairly
relaxed and colleagues in other departments seem to come and go at
sensible hours, you will probably find a large proportion of IT
staff still at their posts, long after the nominal end of the
working day.
For sure, I fully accept that there are many service-related
activities that can only be addressed properly when everyone else
has gone home and things are relatively quiet.
We all have those tasks that genuinely need to be tackled "out of
hours", and even the most enlightened organisation will quibble
slightly if you take the network down for routine maintenance at
ten o'clock in the morning - that is why we all need an effective
resource planning process to ensure we make the best use of our
service "windows".
Mind you, even this preciously short time is diminishing rapidly
with the combined influences of non-stop Web processing and 24-7
global operations. No wonder then that our service departments are
under increasingly severe pressure to work longer, more unsocial
hours.
Most support people accept this as a fundamental part of their job
and, to be honest, some seem to positively thrive on the buzz of
working through until a job is finished.
But the problem is that overextended working hours are not purely
confined to what we used to call "operations". Take a quiet walk
round many computer departments at six o'clock in the evening and
you will come across quite a few project managers, developers and
admin staff still beavering away at their workstations.
So, why haven't they gone home on time, like the other
"white-collar workers"? Why are they still in the office when they
could be at home, in the pub, or on the squash court?
Well, I have studied this behaviour for a while, at a number of
sites, and have come to a few conclusions.
First, we have to differentiate between the occasional and habitual
late stayers.
In this business most of us, if not all of us, will have to put in
a few extra hours every now and again to finish off a particular
task, usually to meet an immovable deadline. Provided that this
doesn't happen too often, we shouldn't suffer anything more than
the occasional personal inconvenience.
However, if we spot that certain people are habitually staying
late, we should always take the time to understand the reason for
their behaviour in case we need to take further action to help
them.
Often, on enquiring, I have found that many people stay on a bit
longer in the evening simply to avoid travelling during the rush
hour; they may also arrive early every day to make their journey to
work easier to bear.
Taken to extremes, this can result in a situation where an 11-hour
working day is the norm, putting these late workers at risk not
only of tiredness from burning the candle at both ends, but also of
creating an unhealthy imbalance between work and home. It also
creates a potential breach of the Working Time Directive and leaves
the employer exposed to penalties.
The best way to deal with this type of over-working is to seek a
flexible compromise, by establishing a mutually agreeable working
day - either an early start, with a compensating early finish, or
vice versa. This is a mature approach and is really a win-win
outcome, rather than a management concession.
Having identified and dealt with the rush-hour warriors, we are
left with three other main categories of habitual, late-working
staff: the heroes, the put-upon and the strugglers.
The "heroes" will wear their burgeoning time-sheets as a badge of
personal honour, sometimes perhaps confusing attendance with
contribution.
We need to be sure here that their long hours actually produce
appropriate results. Are they really cutting the mustard, or does
their ordinary workload constantly expand to fill the time they
make available?
The "put-upon" are those dependable souls who may not necessarily
volunteer for a task but will, nevertheless, not refuse it when
asked. Their competence and good nature can leave these staff wide
open to frequent late nights. Management awareness and special
sensitivity to the causal problems are needed to deal with these
cases.
Of course, the same solutions apply to the "strugglers" - those
staff who are regularly working overtime, either because they
cannot cope with a reasonable weekly workload, or because they are
overburdened by their managers with unreasonable
expectations.
And this is where my altruism kicks in, I'm afraid.
As a manager, I have a very strong vested interest in making sure
that my department does not overcommit itself, either deliberately
or accidentally, because overcommitment inevitably leads to
disappointment, the shortest route I know to losing the confidence
of both staff and customers alike.
So my message this month is clear - if we want to strike a better
balance in our lives, we all need to take strong, positive action
to deal with the long hours culture prevalent within the IT
community.
Luckily, thanks to the faceless Brussels bureaucrats, we already
have the necessary tool at our disposal - the European Working Time
Directive. All we need now is the collective courage to implement
it.
Sadly, as a "managing executive, or other person with autonomous
decision-taking powers" I am out of scope.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you are reading this
after hours, when all about you have fled, go home.
Working too hard?
Are long hours impacting your life?
Let us know with an email >>Colin Beveridge is an interim executive who has held
top-level roles in IT strategy, development services and support.
His travels along the blue-chip highway have taken him to a clutch
of leading corporations, including Shell, BP, ICI, DHL and
Powergen.