The Inefficiency of Overtime

THE INEFFICIENCY OF OVERTIME

An international time-use study outlining what happens at work among knowledge workers who work overtime hours.

Presented to: Time Budgets and Beyond: The Timing of Daily Life International Association of Time Use Research 32nd Conference, Paris France, July 2010

Mark Ellwood B. Comm. President, Pace Productivity Inc. Toronto, Canada

www.GetMoreDone.com

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THE INEFFICIENCY OF OVERTIME

Overtime is the amount of time that employees work over and above standard, or normal working hours. Around the world, these standard hours typically range around 40 hours per week. Normal hours may be based on contractual agreement, law, traditional practice or custom.

In many countries, work done in excess of this must be compensated at a different rate. Paying for overtime hours at a 50% premium is common in many jurisdictions. From the companys perspective, overtime among hourly paid workers encourages a supply of extra labour by paying a premium for extra hours. As Robert A. Hart points out, the company establishes patterns of working time that would otherwise not have been forthcoming.

However, salaried workers do not receive extra compensation for overtime hours. They work more hours than the norm to:

Achieve a level of results beyond expectations in order to obtain a promotion

Reach bonus status, whereby compensation is tied to results

Comply with requests by senior management

Conform with peer pressure

Be consistent with external schedules (e.g. train schedules, car pooling, or night time courses)

Avoid stresses elsewhere. (For some, the attraction of work occurs when work becomes like home and home is too much work)

BACKGROUND DATA

While workers today complain about long work hours Juliet Schor estimates that 20th and 21st century work hours are actually considerably lower than in the mid-nineteenth century. During this period artificial lighting stretched the workday into the night. Combined with the pressures of emerging capitalismthe longer workday and the expanding work-year increased hours dramatically. Whereas I estimate a range of 1,440 to 2,300 hours per year for English peasants before the seventeenth century, a mid-nineteenth-century work in either England or the United States might put in an annual level of between 3,150 and 3,650 hours.

Assuming a 52-week year with no vacations, this translates to 60.5 hours to 70.2 hours per week. A 40-hour work week today, including two weeks vacation and ten statutory holidays translates to 1,920 hours per year.

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During the 20th century, with the rise of unions and more regulated workplaces, hours of work generally decreased. Deborah Sunter and Ren Morissette show this trend below, noting how hours of work dropped massively from the beginning to the late 20th century.

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Overall U.S. macro statistics show that hours have not changed dramatically over the last thirty years. The table below shows work hours remaining in the range of 38-39 hours per week.

This might seem surprising to employees who are required to work at least 40 hours and who have seen an increase in their overtime hours. The data blends full time and part-time employees together.

TABLE 1 HISTORICAL WORK HOURS Total Women Men

1976 38.4 34.1 41.4 1977 38.5 34.2 41.6 1978 38.7 34.4 41.8 1979 38.6 34.4 41.7 1980 38.3 34.4 41.2 1981 37.9 34.1 40.7 1982 37.7 34.0 40.6 1983 38.1 34.4 41.0 1984 38.6 34.9 41.5 1985 38.9 35.2 41.8 1986 38.9 35.3 41.9 1987 38.8 35.3 41.8 1988 39.3 35.7 42.2 1989 39.4 35.8 42.4 1990 39.3 35.8 42.1 1991 39.1 35.8 41.9 1992 38.8 35.6 41.6 1993 39.3 36.0 42.1 1994 39.1 35.6 42.1 1995 39.2 35.7 42.2 1996 39.2 35.7 42.2 1997 39.4 36.0 42.3 1998 39.2 35.9 42.2 1999 39.5 36.2 42.4 2000 39.6 36.4 42.4 2001 39.2 36.1 41.8 2002 39.1 36.1 41.7 2003 39.0 35.9 41.6 2004 39.0 35.9 41.6 2005 39.1 36.1 41.7 2006 39.2 36.2 41.7 2007 39.1 36.1 41.6 2008 38.8 36.1 41.2

SOURCE: Current Population Survey, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Non-Agricultural industries

However, what the table above does not show is that in the last three decades, there has been an increasing polarization of work hours. Whereas in the past, production employees targeted

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towards an ideal 40-hour work week, today, more employees work part-time, more work long hours and fewer work a 40-hour week.

The following table shows how the share of managers (i.e. a subset of all knowledge workers) working more than 40 hours has increased.

Chart 1: Share of Managers Working 49 Hours or More Per Week

Source: Bureau of Labour Statistic, Issues in Labour Statistics, Are Managers and Professional Really Working more?

Around the world, there are a number of countries where the incidence of long work hours is higher than the U.S. Note that these represent a mix of employees or self-employed workers.

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Chart 2 - Working Time Around the World

Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), Working Time Around the World (ILO and Routledge 2007), pp 46 51.

RESEARCH QUESTION AND METHODOLOGY

Exasperated employees often comment on the long hours they work. Sometimes it appears to be a boast those who are busy and working long hours must be more successful than those who leave the office promptly at the designated close of business, such as 5:00 p.m. Or so the perception goes.

On the other hand, many comments about long hours reflect genuine angst. Galinsky et al find that 26% of employees were overworked in the last month and 27% were overwhelmed by how much work they had to do often or very often in the last month.

Time use research answers the question about how long employees work. Our questions are more specific;

What happens during overtime in terms of activities? Are there efficiencies in working overtime? What are the patterns of activity through the day and through the week?

Understanding long term trends in overtime work is difficult because data usually blends part time and full time employees to determine a composite work week. It also blends employees from traditional production industries (manufacturing, mining, transportation) with knowledge workers (sales reps, managers, clerks).

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The focus of this paper deals with knowledge workers. For the most part, these are employees and self-employed individuals who do the majority of their work in offices, as opposed to production lines, farms, mines, etc. Their work might include a portion of travel to customer locations. Some also do a portion of their work from home-based offices. The main distinction of knowledge workers versus manufacturing workers is that, on the whole, they are not doing work that requires a physical effort of moving or making things. They are selling, managing, planning, engineering, providing service, administering, counting, recording, etc.

Data for this study is derived from Pace Productivity Incs proprietary database of 311,711 hours of real time data recorded on a portable electronic device called a TimeCorder time tracking system. 3,600 participating employees usually tracked their time on this device for two weeks. See Appendix 1 for methodology details. Data is from 1990 to 2010.

Time of day data is based on a subset of the main database. Results are based on data from 268 participants, all of whom worked more than 50 hours per week. 60,075 individual time stamped events were examined data from 2004-2010.

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MAJOR FINDINGS

Employees can be classified into categories based on the number of hours they work:

Under 30 Part time 30 40 Undertime 40-45 Full time 45-50 Extra time 50 60 Overtime 60 70 Excess time 60-80 Extreme time 80 + Danger time

1. Knowledge workers work an average of 46.7 hours per week. A typical work week includes all of the work an employee is contracted to do, plus lunch and breaks during the regular workday at a work location. It would also include work done outside of the office and during the evenings and weekends, but does not including breaks after hours. Commuting time is not includes, since employees are not paid for this time and commuting distances vary greatly by employee. Those who work exclusively at home include all of their lunch and break time during normal hours. (i.e. 9:00 a.m. 5:00 p.m.), but not before or after. They would also include travel time to their main office, or to customer locations.

These results show that at 46.7 hours per week, employees are working a regular 40 hour week plus about an extra hour per day.

Data from the Pace Productivity Inc. data (See Appendix 1 for methodology) shows that among knowledge workers, i.e. those primarily doing salaried office work, the total work week over the last 20 years has averaged 46.7 hours per week.

The table below shows the last twenty years in 5-year increments. Work hours are higher at either end of the period may reflect economic conditions. In the early 1990s during an economic recession and again in 2008-2009, workers may have worked longer hours to preserve jobs that were in jeopardy of being lost. As Robert A. Hart comments, overtime hours have been found t respond more quickly than employment stock to fluctuations in business activity. One reason for this is that overtime decisions are more easily reversible than employment hiring decisions.

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TABLE 2 : HISTORICAL TIMECORDER DATA

# of People in Sample

Hours Per

week Occasions Per Week

1990 - 1995 467 47.6 261 1996 - 2000 1017 45.2 144 2001 - 2005 1408 46.1 167 2006 - 2010 1079 48.4 117

All Years 3971 46.7 159

2. With greater seniority comes longer work hours. Length of activity also increases with seniority.

Among full time employees who generally work five days per week, municipal workers generally only work 42.5 hours per week. Some of these are unionized workers with contracts that specify the number of hours. The other jobs that are lower than the average of 46.7 hours per week do not have a travel component. Employees stay at one location. Those who are above average have greater responsibilities, more travel, and more people management components to their jobs. The chart below shows two scales; the blue bars are work hours per week. The scale for the maroon bars is in minutes. The bars represent typical durations, showing how long each event lasts. Those who supervise employees have longer work hours and occasions than those who do not. Consultants are an exception. Unlike most other employees, their income is directly related to hours worked they have a different incentive from employees to work long hours.

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3. Typical durations become longer with seniority. Chart 3 below shows two scales; hours worked per week in blue and durations per event in minutes in maroon. Both scales increase at the same time, however there is not a causal relationship between hours worked and length of duration. Rather durations increase with added responsibilities. Inside sales reps and receptionists for instance receive a high number of short phone calls or customer visits. Hence their durations are short. Middle managers and presidents on the other hand are more involved with long term planning through meetings. Meanwhile field supervisors show a long duration because their time spent in the field is usually long.

WEEKLY HOURS BY JOBAND MINUTES PER EVENT

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Hours per Week

Hours Per Week 42.5 43.6 44.6 45 45.5 48.5 48.7 48.8 50.6 54 54 59.7Duration (Minutes) 11 6 10 14 19 17 22 38 24 35 33 32

Muni-cipal

Worker

Inside Sales

Recept-ion / Asst.

ClericalRetail

Banking Sales

Outside Sales Rep

Sales Mgr

Univ. Faculty

Middle Man-ager

Consult-ant

Field Super-visor

Presi-dent /

VP

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4. Men work more overtime hours than women Among men the average workweek is 48.2 hours per week. For women, the comparable figure is 44.5 hours. Two reasons for this difference are suggested; a) women in our database tend to be employed in more clerical jobs, requiring fewer long hours and b) women face greater pressures to get home to attend to child care and domestic responsibilities as other time use studies have shown.

The chart below shows how womens work hours are skewed to the lower end, while men find themselves working longer hours. As such, only 18% of women work more than 50 hours per week, while 38% of men work more than 50 hours.

CHART 4

Though women work fewer hours in employed work, they then go home to engage in what Juliet B. Schor calls the second shift the duties of housewife and mother. Grocery shopping, picking up the children and cooking dinner take up the next few hours. After dinner theres clean-up, possibly some additional housework, and, of course more child care.

Pace Productivitys own study of mothers time (Time Trade-Offs Among Busy Mothers, 2002) show a work week that consists of 43.3 hours of paid work plus 28.2 hours of child care, and 10.8 hours of household maintenance for a total work week of 82.3 hours.)

HOURS WORKED - MEN VERSUS WOMEN

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

30-40 40-45 45-50 50-60 60-70 70-80

FemaleMale

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TIME OF DAY RESULTS

5. More overtime work is done in the morning than evening.

Overtime work occurs more in the morning than after hours. If one considers a normal work week for knowledge workers to begin at 9:00 a.m. and finish at 5:00 p.m., this would add up to 40 hours per week, including lunch and breaks.

Examining the pattern of activity among 235 employees who worked 50 hours per week or more, TimeCorder data from 2004-2010 indicates that the average hours worked for this sub set of workers is 55.5 hours per week. 72% of these hours (or 40 hours per week) are completed during the 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. period. Of the remainder, 19% occur prior to 9:00 a.m. and only 9% occur after 5:00 p.m.

An expanded work day shows the same pattern. When the bookends of the day are extended one hour earlier and one hour later, the result is a work day that stretches from 8:00 a.m. in the morning until 6:00 p.m. at night. The total time worked during this period now represents 85% of all hours. Earlier in the morning than that, hours worked are equivalent to 10% of the total. Meanwhile later in the evening, overtime hours represent just 5% of the total.

Clearly, when people work long hours, there is a greater tendency to come in early and do their work before the start of the official work day. The chart below show the percent of time spent during each of the 24-hour periods of the day, starting at midnight, the 0 hour.

Distribution of Time Throughout The Day Among Those Working 50+ Hours Per Week

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Hour of Day ( 0 = Midnight to 1:00 a.m.)

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6. Employees are able to achieve greater concentration, before and after regular hours. Concentration can be measured by the duration of tasks how long each one lasts. The greater the interruptions, the shorter the duration. The average duration among those who work overtime is 22 minutes. (Note that the average among all employees is just 15 minutes those in more senior positions who tend to do more overtime hours have longer durations.)

There are not many activities that occur very early in the morning or very late at night. However when they do occur, they tend to be quite long. Early morning events tend to be the longest. Before work from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., durations are 34-39 minutes long. During the regular day (9-5) they average 22 minutes. Around lunch time, activities are longer because lunch breaks take longer than short phone calls, etc. Afternoon events are slightly shorter than those in pre-lunch hours. Then, late in the evening, the length of events picks up, but only to 30 minutes, not as long as the early morning hours.

Duration of Tasks Throughout the Day - in Minutes

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Hour of Day ( 0 = Midnight to 1:00 a.m.)

Du

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tes

7. There is a concentration of administrative activities during overtime hours.

The pattern of selected activities is shown in the chart below. Among those who work more than 50 hours per week (on average 55.5 hours) the patterns for a select number of activities reflects the overall pattern. That is, more overtime work is done prior to 9:00 a.m. than after 5:00 p.m. The major exceptions are meetings with ones manager, reading, and time sheets. More of the overtime hours spent for these three activities occur after the end of the day than in the morning.

Low percentages in the first column indicate that a large proportion of the work is being conducted outside of regular hours. The average for all activities is 72%. This table shows a

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selection of activities that a large number of time study participants have tracked. The table is organized from lowest to highest activities at the top of the list are more prone to being done during overtime hours. (The grey bar separates those that are above and below the average.) Those at the top where much of the work is done during overtime tend to be more administrative and less customer-focused. The one exception is Special Projects, which is not an administrative task. When work on this high priority activity can be done alone, overtime represents a productive time to do it.

Sample Group: Those working over 50 hours per week

% of Work being done during:

Selected Activities 9:00 a.m. to

5:00 p.m. All Overtime

Hours Midnight to 9 :00 a.m.

5:00 p.m. to midnight

Team meetings

43% 57% 42% 16% Miscellaneous Emails 50% 50% 42% 9% Meet with manager 55% 45% 13% 32% Management Meetings

57% 43% 42% 1% Planning the day 59% 41% 25% 16% Time Sheets 59% 41% 16% 25% Internal phone calls 60% 40% 34% 6% Special projects 60% 40% 38% 2% Internal Communications 60% 40% 34% 6% Personal Training 62% 38% 28% 10% Administration / Paperwork 63% 37% 25% 12% Call Reports 63% 37% 16% 21% Safety Compliance 64% 36% 35% 1% Emergency customer response

65% 35% 17% 17% Voice mail listen / respond 69% 31% 23% 8% Account Administration 70% 30% 26% 4% Reading 70% 30% 12% 18% Branch Administration 71% 29% 17% 12%

Coaching / mentoring 72% 28% 15% 13% Business travel 73% 27% 21% 6% Miscellaneous 77% 23% 17% 6% Sales prospecting calls 78% 22% 11% 11% Supervision 79% 21% 2% 18% Quote preparation

80% 20% 9% 11% Marketing 84% 16% 5% 10% Generate / manage leads 85% 15% 7% 9% Credit Applications 86% 14% 7% 7% Customer phone inquiries 88% 12% 5% 7% Sales meetings with prospects

88% 12% 8% 3% Internal Meetings 88% 12% 10% 2% Personal time 89% 11% 4% 7%

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Sample Group: Those working over 50 hours per week

% of Work being done during:

Selected Activities 9:00 a.m. to

5:00 p.m. All Overtime

Hours Midnight to 9 :00 a.m.

5:00 p.m. to midnight

Sales meetings with customers 89% 11% 8% 3% Customer service meetings 92% 8% 5% 3% Personnel planning

94% 6% 5% 0% Walk-in customer appt. 96% 4% 3% 1%

ALL ACTIVITIES 72% 28% 19% 9%

OTHER TIME OF DAY / TIME OF WEEK FINDINGS

The biggest spike for team / department meetings is between 8 and 9 a.m.

Email sessions peak at 60 minutes on Sundays versus just 25 minutes during the week. The biggest hours for handling miscellaneous email are 6-8 a.m. representing 21% of all the time on this activity

Planning happens as much on Sunday as any other activity (2% of the total week). On those occasions when it occurs, planning is very long 130 minutes versus a typical 10-15 minutes during the week. The peak times for planning are 8-10 in the morning.

Professional reading is never done on the weekend. Those who take materials from the office expecting to read them at home either conduct other work activities first, or do none at all.

Management meetings tend to occur between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. They are longest on Wednesdays, peaking at 115 minutes versus 30-90 minutes on other days. Fridays are the shortest at just 30 minutes

Coaching sessions occur later in the day than other activities, peaking at 2:00-3:00 p.m.

Prospect meetings peak between 10 and 11 a.m. Prospecting calls occur mostly between 9 and 5, dropping off at noon for an hour. Longest times for calls are at 9, 3 and surprisingly 8 p.m. when calls lengthen to 13 minutes versus only 10 minutes the rest of the time.

Customer phone inquires are above average on the weekends, representing 11% of the time. They tend to peak between 10 and 11 in the morning most days.

Walk-in appointments, largely related to retail banking, occur 9% of the time on Saturdays because often branches are open on this day. Zero walk-ins occur on Sunday

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when branches are closed. However, these tend to be the shortest occasions. Averaging only 10 minutes versus 12-16 minutes during weekdays. Of these, Fridays are the longest. Though a greater number of walk-ins occur on Monday and Tuesday. Mornings are busier than afternoons.

There is a spike in returning voice mails at 9:00 a.m. Although those who work overtime come in early in the morning, they tend to wait until everyone else is in to call them.

Customer service meetings skew towards the afternoon from noon to 3 p.m. Weekend activities are very rare.

Emergency responses have the largest weekend component. Fully 25% of the time spent on emergencies is done on weekends.

Miscellaneous activities occur 8% of the time on the weekends, slightly above average.

Meetings with ones manager regarding performance tend to fall outside normal hours. These often occur between 6 and 8 p.m. These one-on-one meetings are conducted in the relative quiet of after hours, reflecting on the events of the day.

Quote preparations never occur on the weekend, perhaps because other internal departments are not available to provide input and support. It is often difficult to prepare complicated quote on ones own.

Time sheets are often done on Saturdays. While the frequency of events on Saturday is low, the time spent for each event is high. Saturday time is 13% of the total

The biggest day for generating and managing leads is Monday (31% of the time). Activity drops off considerable all the way through Friday (14% of the time.). Sales reps who are re-energized after the weekend get off to a strong start each new week. Perhaps they intuitively recognized that Friday afternoons are a time of lighter work, and hence do not make their calls at that time.

The exception is special projects. They tend to get done early in the morning, more than almost any other activity except for team meetings and emails.

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8. There is no efficiency in working overtime. During overtime, the percentage of time spent on high priority work increases only slightly, while time spent on secondary or support activities is replaced by non-value added activities.

Many employees will say that they often arrive at work early in the morning because thats when I get all my work done. The idea is that with fewer people around, there are fewer interruptions, scheduled meetings, calls from customers, staff to supervise, and emergency situations to take care of. Thus the assumption that employees made is that the border times, early and late, are when high priority task and important work gets done.

In fact, there is no greater emphasis on high priority tasks during overtime hours. While additional time becomes available for a few high priority tasks, there are others that cannot be done during this time and so administrative tasks fill in the time.

Our research includes data from 1831 activities, primarily those done by knowledge workers. These are employees who are managing, selling, serving customers, supervising staff, planning, engineering, managing projects, answering customer queries, etc. Together, these activities fall into the eleven categories within three major groups, described below.

A) PRIORITY ACTIVITIES

Planning - Activities in this category deal with forward thinking and planning, from planning ones day to long term strategic planning.

Selling - These activities are meant to increase sales, either to current customers or to new prospects. Some sales are to individuals (i.e. banking), most are business to business. Selling is done primarily on the phone, or in person. In a few cases, sales correspondence is included.

Management - Management includes direction of employees. This includes coaching and managing staff, personnel planning, dealing with personnel issues, job site supervision, running team meetings, scheduling staff, performance reviews.

Client / Customer Service - These are activates that clients pay for.

B) SUPPORT / SECONDARY ACTIVITIES

Client Administration - These activities occur just prior to a sale being made and just after. They include preparing quotes entering orders in the system, and setting up clients. All of the behind-the-scenes activities are included here.

Internal Operations - These activities advance a sale or customer service. Production activities occur here, for instance.

Miscellaneous - These are activities that do not show up anywhere else. They are business activities that did not appear any where else on participants list of activities to track. They might fit into any one of these major categories.

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C) NON-VALUE ADDED ACTIVITIES

Administration - These are internal activities that are not directly connected with specific customers or clients. They include many paperwork and administrative activities such as writing internal reports. A number of internal meetings are included, such as regular staff meetings that are not involved with long term planning. They are regular update and information meetings.

Travel - Only business travel is included, not commuting. This includes traveling directly to work sites or to customer locations directly from a home office. Traveling to a regular office location (commuting) is not included because it is not an activity that that employees are paid for.

Personal Time - While at work, employees need to take breaks for the washroom and for lunch. Occasionally these are contractually agreed. In some cases, employees are required to work 37.5 hours during a 5-day week, and are allowed an hour a day for lunch. We include these hours. Whether or not the employee is being paid, he or she is at or near the work premises. Other personal activities that might occur during the work week include calling a spouse or day care, conducting banking, or conducting personal business on-line. It might also include chatting with co-workers. When employees work overtime outside of their main office location (i.e. at home), these hours are not included in their work time.

Emergencies - Emergencies are customer related activities that ideally would never occur. They occasionally need to be done, but are highly disruptive to personal and organizational schedules.

With the three classifications, we examined time use data from 1990 through to 2010, classifying 1,760 activities into one of the 11 major categories. Then these categories were re-grouped into those that are priorities, those that are supporting activities, and those that are non-supporting activities. In the latter case, these are necessary parts of the job.

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HOURS PER WEEK BY CATEGORY

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

Ho

urs

Pe

r Ca

tego

ry

Administration 7.3 7.7 10.4 11.2 14.1 18.8Customer Service 6.1 7 7.8 10.4 9.3 11.1Client Admin 6.3 7 6.6 6 4.8 3.6Selling 5.6 6.4 6.3 6 6.2 7.8Personal Time 4 4.3 4 3.7 3 5.6Planning 2.2 3.1 3.3 4.1 6 8.1Management 1.8 2.6 3.4 5.3 8.1 5.9Miscelleneous 2.8 2.2 2.5 2.6 2.6 0.3Internal Operations 1.9 2.1 2.3 3.5 4.2 1.8Travel 0.6 0.7 1.4 2.8 5.5 6.8

30-40 40-45 45-50 50-60 60-70 70-80

With overall increased hours worked, most categories show an increase. An exception is client administration. Activities in this category are usually done by employees who have no incentive to work long hours. Those at more senior levels in the organization, who usually work longer hours, do not have client administration as a main task.

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As shown in the chart above, time spent on high priority activities increases as more hours are worked. But so does non-value added time, at faster rate. Meanwhile, supporting activities are constant until extreme hours are worked, at which point they begin to decline.

HOURS PER WEEK BY MAJOR CATEGORY

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5

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15

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25

30

35

40

Primary Activities 16 19 21 26 30 33 Non-Value Added 12 13 16 18 24 36 Supporting Activities 11 11 11 12 12 6

30-40 40-45 45-50 50-60 60-70 70-80

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DAYS OF THE WEEK

The following analysis focuses solely on those who work more than 50 hours per week and looks at when overtime occurs. We assume a standard 9-5 work week of 40 hours as a base. In this analysis, time stamp data was selected from 267 individuals for whom time stamp data is available. Data includes results from 2004-2010. The average work week among this group is 55.5 hours per week.

9. Slightly More work is done on Wednesdays than other days, representing 20% of the time. The lowest weekday is Friday, representing 18% of the time. Weekends are much smaller, with Saturday equivalent to 3% of the time and Sunday 2 %.

TIME SPENT BY DAY AMONG THOSE WORKING OVERTIME

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

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10. Work done on Fridays by those who work overtime drops off versus the other days in all three major segments of the day; morning, evening and during the day.

With the impending weekend, employees are keen to work or shorter day and take time off. Also, knowing that they have a buffer of available overtime hours on Saturday and Sunday, they may postpone overtime on Friday in lieu of picking it up on the weekend.

TIME SPENT BY DAY AMONG OVERTIME WORKDERS

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0 IN

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ES IN

SA

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Before 9 53 62 67 61 57 8 4During day 202 204 205 204 189 29 15After 5 27 25 27 26 17 4 6


11. Typical durations for activities average 23 minutes among those who work overtime. That is, using the TimeCorder device, employees switched from one activity to another every 23 minutes. This includes relative long travel trips, meetings (averaging 39 minutes each), personal breaks, etc. which offset relatively short activities such as phone calls and interruptions from co-workers.

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12. Durations are the longest on Sundays. During the week, typical durations range from 22-25 minutes. On Saturdays, the durations are much shorter. Although very little overtime work occurs on Saturday, when it does there are more interruptions than any other time, resulting in a typical duration of just 15 minutes. Then on Sunday there is more concentrated time, resulting in a duration of 47 minutes.

When employees do planning, they spend long amounts of time on it during Sundays.

TYPICAL DURATIONS IN MINUTES PLANNING DAILY SCHEDULE ACTIVITY

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TYPICAL DURATIONS IN MINUTES - ALL TASKS

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IMPLICATIONS

Employers need to understand the work patterns of employees who work overtime. They are more inclined to work before the start of the day than after. This affects the timing of employee benefits programs such as fitness classes, daycare, and even cafeteria / snack bar offerings (i.e. breakfasts instead of pizza dinners). It also affects when meetings can be held.

Major priority activities need to be scheduled during prime hours. During overtime hours, customers, team members, and other departments are not always available. Therefore priority work that involves others needs to be done during regular hours. (The exception to this is when those contacted reside in other time zones.)

Employers need to offer and support family friendly policies to women (primarily) who wish to work regular hours and get home to take care of unpaid work responsibilities such as child care and domestic maintenance.

The challenge for organizations is not to simply shift the time when administration tasks get done, but to eliminate them, automate them, or delegate them.

Mornings create better opportunities for concentrated activities, as measured by duration length, than evenings. Those who want to spend extended times on projects are better coming in early than staying late. As for the day of the week, Sundays are best for achieving concentrated effort.

Employees who expect that their long work hours are only temporary are working under a false assumption. As one rises up through the organization, working hours become longer. So there is no break that occurs with seniority, unless employees employ effective time management techniques or unless the organizations culture supports healthy work-life balance.

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REFERENCES

Ciulla, Joanne B. The Working life: the promise and betrayal of modern work, Random House 2008

Ellwood, Mark Time Trade Offs Among Busy Mothers, International Time Use Conference, University of Waterloo, 2002

Galinsky et al, Over work in America, a report by the Families and Work Institute, 2004

Hart, Robert A The Economics of Overtime Working, Cambridge University Press, 2004

Hoshschild, Arlie Russell, The Time Bind, Metropolitan Books, 1997

Schor, Juliet B. The Overworked American, BasicBooks, A Division of Harper Collins, 1992

Sunter, Deborah and Morrisette, Rene The hours people work, Perspective on Labour and Income Magazine, Autumn 1994, Volume 6, no. 3, Article 2

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APPENDIX 1 : TIME TRACKING METHODOLOGY

This summarizes data from a number of corporate time studies, each of which was designed with a different purpose. Objectives include benchmarking, determining best practices, setting standards, improving time management, building business plans, etc.

It is a summary of data combined from 98 time studies commissioned by corporate clients. Typically these were designed to identify what activities make up the day of a group of employees. For this paper, managers have been isolated.

Pace Productivity Inc. has conducted these studies on behalf of corporate clients since 1990. The database of results gathered from 1990 to 2005 contains over 170,864 hours of real time data, covering 678,979 events.

Focusing on managers only, this group of 385 participants tracked their time for 42,639 cumulative hours, recording 126,401 events.

The purpose of the typical study is to improve organizational effectiveness by creating an environment where employees can spend the greatest amount of time on their highest priority tasks. The corollary to this is that they should spend as little time as possible on their lowest priority tasks those that do not contribute directly to results.

In other academic research, the interest has been to study the role of a manager how he or she is effective in doing the job. In this study, the concern is more about what is to be achieved what the output of the job is. For instance, regardless of whether the manager uses meetings, face-to-face contact or email, are sales calls being made? Are orders being processed? Are customer service reps being coached to do their jobs better?

The TimeCorder electronic device used to gather the data was introduced in the spring of 2004. The previous version of the device was slightly larger and heavier and had a flip top lid. The newer version of the device is 4 inches wide by 7 inches long (deep).

The TimeCorder device allows users to easily track their time by pushing buttons associated with pre-coded activities. It has a series of buttons labeled A to Z. Each button is associated with an activity. Each time a study participant presses a new button, time stops recording on the previous activity and begins recording on a new one, like a chess clock in reverse. In addition to cumulative time, the TimeCorder also tracks the number of occasions for each activity. When a button is pressed, the count for that activity increases by one. In the report, the accumulation of

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these is referred to as occasions. By dividing cumulative time by the number of occasions, a typical duration is derived. It is the average length of time for which an activity occurs, expressed in minutes. Data recorded with the TimeCorder is tracked accurately to the second.

Employees consistently embrace TimeCorder studies with enthusiasm. This is because a unique methodology that a) gets them involved from the beginning, b) asks for their input c) makes the process fun and d) gives them instant feedback. Cooperation level, based on an initial review of raw data is approximately 96%.

Typically the managers in this database are middle managers and above. For instance, production line supervisors or team leads for clerical staff are not included.

Following is a list of industries from which data has been collected:

Financial Services Manufacturing Wholesale Distribution Retail Consulting Banking

Advertising Sales Travel Computer Software Professional Hospitality Public Service

Typically, the purpose for conducting a time study was to gather data to: Increase organizational effectiveness Recruit qualified managers and staff Train managers to acquire and apply new skills Eliminate activities that dont contribute to primary job functions Provide appropriate technology that automates mechanical, clerical, repetitive tasks Introduce systems that facilitate communications without adding to administrative work.

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THOSE WORKING 30-40 HOURS PER WEEK (N = 277) Hours Percent Duration Per Week of Time Occasions (Minutes) Planning 2.2 6% 9 15 Selling 5.6 15% 21 16 Management 1.8 5% 5 21 Client Administration 6.3 16% 24 16 Customer Service 6.1 16% 35 10 Internal Operations 1.9 5% 10 11 Administration 7.3 19% 31 14 Travel 0.6 2% 1 26 Miscellaneous 2.8 7% 9 18 Emergencies 0.0 0% 0 12 Personal Time 4.0 10% 9 26 TOTAL 38.5 100% 155 15



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Exhibit 1 JOBS TRACKED

Account Executive Accounting Clerk Acct Mgr Small Business Admin Assistant / Support Analyst Arborist Area Manager Assistant Principal Assistant Risk Manager Assistant Store Manager Assistant Vice President Asst. Mgr. Personal Banking Branch Administrator Branch Manager Branch Systems Administrator Business Direct Acct. Mgr. Business Internet Officer Business Officer (Retail) Caregiver Cashier Account Clerk Central Teller Clerk of Works Comm. Ban Relationship Mgr Commercial Bank Support Committee Coordinator Secretary Treasurer Community Relationship Rep Compliance Officer / Quality Consultant Consultative Account Manager Controller / CFO Corporate Service Assistant Credit Filing Staff Credit Officer Credit Rep Credit Solutions Credit Supervisor Customer Service Rep Customer Support Engineer Deputy Clerk

Doctor Documentation Staff Truck Driver Drug Rep Electrical General Foreman Expert Facilities Coordinator Facility Laborer Facility Manager Financial Advisor / Investment Executive Forestry General Foreman Graphic Artist House Person (Hotel) Information Services Staff Inside / Transactional Telesales Rep Inside Sales Rep Lab / Quality Manager Lawyer Licensing Director Manager Manager - Commercial Admin Support Manager - HR Administration Manager Compliance Manager Customer Service Manager of Records, Election Services Manager Personal Banking Mgr. Product / Mrkt Analysis Market Development Planning Manager Marketing / Communications Marketing Manager Marketing Officer (Retail) MIS / Project Officer Municipal Worker Neighbourhood Sales Rep Nurse Performance Supervisor Personal Banking Assistant Personal Banking Officer

Planner Plant Manager Policy Documentation President Principal Product Manager Product Support Production Manager Professional Organizer Professional Speaker Project Coordinator Project Manager Purchasing Receptionist / Admin Asst. Recreation Coordinator Refinery Manager Relationship Manager Repair Specialist University Faculty Retail Store Clerk Risk and Portfolio Manager Sales Assistant Sales Co-Ordinator Rep Sales Engineer Sales Manager Sales Representative Scientist Senior Manager Service Officer Store Manager Store Manager Trainee Store Merchandiser Team Lead Technologist Teller - Custmr Service Rep Territory Manager - Retail Town Planner Treasurer Unit Financial Control (UFC) Vice President Volunteer Warehousemen / Stockroom Zoning Coordinator

Documents

The Inefficiency of Overtime