how many hours do you work a week?

Suppose it all comes down to what type of job your in and what position your in.

I work alot, but thats mainly because of my position in the company. I enjoy it and understand that my hours are a rollercoaster, high and low depending on levels of business, sickness, holidays, meetings etc.

I have no set hours, or set times to work, could work 8 hr shifts, or 60 hour shifts, its all business dependant.

What i do understand and know is

1/ During these prolifically hard times, i’m glad i have a job
2/ I get paid generally quite well with added potential
3/ I make sure my employees get paid for hours worked, any holidays wanted or time off needed is given, incentified for going above the expected and generally feel wanted ( i produce a quarterly anonymous feedback form which they all fill in which tells me this)
4/ I make sure that if my mgt team work extra days they get these back in lieu when business can sustain this
5/ i look after myself and on average take off what i need and fit my work schedule ( where possible) around my personal ( see biking) life

I would also love to win the lottery 🙂

A bit like the above, when I was working (between jobs for a few weeks), I’d sometimes work 10+ hours a day 5 days a week then another 10 at the weekend, others I rolled in at 10am and left at 5pm because there was a convenient break. Typically though, 50+ hours a week including weekends.

When I first moved to London I had some horrific weeks (for a games company). Did over 100 hours one week, total exhaustion and we **** something up that cost the company a lot of money. They didn’t work us like that again.

At the moment I’m at work 37hrs per week, can’t say I work all of that though. Very quiet at the moment, when I have lots of site visits, exhibitions etc… that can go up quite a bit.

Still very relaxed attitude here, motivation/inspiration aren’t high though.

No wonder there’s so much unemployment in the UK if half the people with jobs are working 60hr weeks!

I work away on an equal rotation, when i’m there i work a minimum of 84 hours a week. Sometimes i’ll work up to 120 odd (thankfully not that often), don’t get any overtime.

Wow – reading this is making me appreciate how good I’ve got it! I do a 35 hour week flexi time. I can take 1 flex day off per month if I’ve done the extra hours or can go a day behind on my hours if needed.

Work 40 hours each week over 4 days- with no guaranteed breaks at all – it depends on workload. Can usually scrape 20 minutes for lunch. Have to do a bit of research / training on top of that to keep up to date. Work an extra overnight 8 hour shift approximately every fortnight – it’s well paid – and I think of this as the bike / holiday fund.

Same here, but you’ve forgotten to account for “inbetweenies” and other time polishing hand rails.

Tut tut, you are in roughly the same game as me, what about the 2 on 2 off routine, brings that average right down.

Hehe. I may have been a bit disingenuous. On a 2 on 3 off, it works out at about 33.5 hours a week. I’m in the lab as well, which amounts to a metric sh*tload of time eating bacon sarnies, drinking tea and surfing the web. I balance the guilt at the total lack of work that actually gets done in my day-to-day with the knowledge that “I am paid for what I know, not what I do”.

No fixed hours but typical day starts a 6am and ends at 7.30pm; lots of lost evenings though, I got in at 11.30pm last night. Fortunate to love my work and have a boss who extends time off whenever I need it outside of holiday. Work very hard but great work / life balance… Wife might disagree a little but works for me.

Love working for a small firm, much more flexible.

Self employed here, as many or as less as i want really. Up to 3 years ago i was working 12 hr night shifts 4 nights a week, and i thought it was cushy!

But it doesn’t feel like work anyway, rarely work more than 35-40.

I am very lucky 😀

Anything from 50-70hrs a week.

Do what you can to get the job done but make sure you’re rewarded for it.

In jobs which demand longer working hours you should be compensated by either overtime, career progression or associated performance related bonus.

the long hours culture damages people and their families and does not produce anything significant extra.

Couldn’t disagree more. But it depends on the industry you work in I guess.

As with so many, it varies.

But I’m always in the office by 0700, and rarely leave before 1930. A lot of the time it goes well beyond that. Then again, I typically don’t work at weekends, and I’m well paid for what I do.

LHS – its been shown that your decision making gets so poor as does your time management that you produce little extra for the extra hours. This is why people like lorry drivers and doctors have strict limits on their working hours as their mistakes can cost lives

As for family lives – if you are working 70 hr weeks when do you have time to spend with your partner and kids?

Its Ok occasionaly but as a regular thing?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/20/britishidentity.health

No one will retire thinking ” I wish I had spent more time at work”

Conclusions

* Long hours working is associated with (but is not proved to cause) various negative effects, such as decreased productivity, poor performance, health problems, and lower employee motivation.

http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/pubs/summary.php?id=errs16

37.5 hours per week. Any extra is overtime or I get back later. I live in Norway though.

Over here the attitude seems to be that if you can’t get all your work done in normal working hours then you’re obviously not very good at your job.

The same attitude exists in Sweden as BruceWee states, although its a little less extreme. However the idea of staying around in the office to be “seen” is utterly alien over here, unlike the UK.

I bill an average of 40 hours a weeks, and then maybe work 5 to 10 hours more on internal projects for my company. I work very flexible hours and have a much better work/life balance than the UK despite earning a lot less.

Yeah, it may not be as extreme as I made out above but the idea of unpaid overtime is very uncommon. There is also a lot of consideration given to families. For example, if one of your kids is sick then you can take paid sick days to look after them.

As far as pay goes, I make about twice as much here as I would in the UK.

thanks guys,

interesting to see the diversity.

matt22 – Member
Just done 31 twelve hour night shifts in a row, i work on an oil rig.

any chance you can send me an email matey – morgs DOT bdavies AT gmail DOT com

couldn’t see one in your profile

cheers

This is why people like lorry drivers and doctors have strict limits on their working hours as their mistakes can cost lives

Couldn’t agree with you more where lives are at risk, but in other industries it doesn’t work like that and working longer hours as a team gives you the advantage over your competitors.

As for family lives – if you are working 70 hr weeks when do you have time to spend with your partner and kids?

Through proper time management you find time. In my earlier career I priortised the first hour of the day over breakfast with the family and a few hours in the evening to sit down and have a proper dinner, walk the dog etc with them whilst still working a 60-70hr week.

LHS – woking the same number of hours total but using more staff so each of you is working less hours would be far more productive.

there is loads of data on this but your productivity falls rapidly as your hours increase two people doing 35 hrs will produce far more than one person doing 70 hrs

LHS – woking the same number of hours total but using more staff so each of you is working less hours would be far more productive.

In some industries, maybe, in others definitly not. People aren’t clones, they are unique and have unique skills that you need to call on. With many companies too work comes in peaks and troughs so employing more people during those troughs is not workable.

I usually work between 50 and 60 hours a week, with my contract saying 37.5 hours. I try not to do any real work at the weekend (although I’ll often be thinking stuff through) these days though.

150 per 4 week month, usually a mixture of 14 hour days and 11 hour nights, normally get about 14 full days off

9-5 Monday to Friday with an hour for lunch. Anything extra goes into the TOIL pot, we have a very clear work ethic here, in that we work hard in the time given to us, but after that, we’re being ushered out of the door by the owner.

Occasionally get the odd weekend’s work (shows/exhibitions/etc) but that time is compensated for & given back.

I’ve done the long hours culture before. It’s a horrible place to be.

There does appear to be a lot of hours worked by the STW forum goers, perhaps we spend too long on here 💡
I’m paid for 37.5 hours 9-5.30 with an hour for lunch (usually take 20 minutes). I typically ‘work’ 40-50 hours dependant on whether I’m working away, that includes travel but not time to myself in the evenings when I’m away (ie sitting in a hotel room on my own). At the moment I’m not very busy and working from home so too much of my time is spent on here.
If a project needs it or if it’s an enjoyable one to work on I’ll put in the hours but I don’t except it when it become the norm to work so many unpaid hours. If not the only people who are gaining is the company owners and shareholders.

Having read the above i can only conclude that most of you are working way too many hours; how do you fit in family time and “me” time?
An old punk quote from Patrik Fitzgerald i adhere too;
“Work is nothing but an illusion and all been desinged to keep the F****** in their places”
I work 37 and a half hours on the dot.
Your wasting good bike time.

* Long hours working is associated with (but is not proved to cause) various negative effects, such as decreased productivity, poor performance, health problems, and lower employee motivation.

Totally Agree, I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague here the other day.

His point was that having seen the change from Drawing boards and slide rules to CAD and Spreadsheets, the work had not gotten Easier but that individuals were expected to produce more and much faster, the upshot was that people tend to work longer days now not because of some over developed work ethic but primarily due to fear of being labeled as slow, or lacking in commitment, generally the culture is one of “meeting Program” these days… IT has not set us free or given us more free time it’s had the opposite effect…

I’m Not sure how you break the cycle though, without a period of unemployment… the current economic state of the country seems to be the perfect environment for corporate bullies…

Some of us jokingly refer to ourselves as “RGUs” (Revenue Generation Units) – as this is quite clearly how our employer sees us, I was excitedly informed by a PM the other day that “Overtime is available on this job!” as if I live for the opportunity to work 10 hour+ days and never see my family… Nobber…

I’m Not sure how you break the cycle though, without a period of unemployment..

Join unions, refuse to opt out of the working time directive, log every hour you spend at work.

I was really hoping the UK opt out of the WTD would be removed – no other country has it.

We have the longest average working week in the EU despite huge numbers of part time jobs. 35 hr week for everyone would reduce unemployment dramatically and would make us a more productive and happy society as well as much much richer.

The other aspect of this that makes me laugh is the people that work the long hours regularly ( to do it occasionally to hit a deadline is diffent)think they are well paid. Their hourly rate will be low even if the salaries are high.

good employers will not let their employees work long hours. its ultimately bad for the business as so many mistakes get made and staff get burnout / go off sick.

Officially 08:30 – 17:30, inc. 1hr lunch.

Reality = 08:40/09:00 – 17:30/18:00, inc. 30mins lunch.

I work in IT, so the hours need to be flexible…

2000 till 0800. Normal Hours hours are 36 a week if I’m not at Uni or just 11 to 16 if Iam.

Work in a Nursing Home

I hope all the people above working crazy hours are being paid overtime or have a nice fat salary. If not then really you’re in the wrong job or have the wrong employer. I really hate the one-upman-ship thing that starts to happen when people start working longer hours to prove how important they are. If you are having to work many hours to get the job done then your employer needs to employ more people (fair enough if you’re self employed) or you need to get better at time management.

+1

once you go over a certain amount of time worked your productivity drops rapidly as you lose concentration and make mistakes – which is why we have maximum hours for lorry drivers and so on. the long hours culture damages people and their families and does not produce anything significant extra.

its different if you are doing a one off push to a deadline but to do it regularly is not helpful

+1

Overtime on a regular basis is appreciated by no one. If you stop doing it you will get grief. Don’t fall into the habit. Make your boss get on his knees and beg. Don’t be a sucker.

+1

The other aspect of this that makes me laugh is the people that work the long hours regularly ( to do it occasionally to hit a deadline is diffent)think they are well paid. Their hourly rate will be low even if the salaries are high.

good employers will not let their employees work long hours. its ultimately bad for the business as so many mistakes get made and staff get burnout / go off sick.

+1

threads like these always become a bit three yorkshiremenish for some people.

+1

I’ve worked in mega unpaid overtime culture. Never again. It was a totally nonsensical way for an organisation to function, only remotely sustainable because so many people were conditioned into thinking that living their sorry life as a martyr was in some way noble. It isn’t.

In an occasional emergency situation, deadlines and the like, unpaid overtime is fine. As par for the course, it’s a travesty.

Of course paid overtime is fine for those that choose to take it on.

My wife works full time days while i look after the 2 kiddies, i then go and work most evenings and sometimes both weekend days (always at least one of them).
We need the mmoney, simple as that, i dont really get time to ride anymore though, once a week if i am lucky.

On paper, 07:30 – 16:30 five days per week. Nominally have a 45 min lunch hour but don’t usually take one. + work from home as and when needed. Fine with it, the contract that I signed when I started stipulated that I would work whatever hours necessary to get the job done.

Join unions, refuse to opt out of the working time directive, log every hour you spend at work.

Taking the Great out of Great Britain!

Taking the Great out of Great Britain!

The ‘Great’ Britain people longingly refer to was, as far as I can see, built on the back of inequality and arrogance. Only a privileged few would enjoy being back there.

Hmm. Inequality and arrogance, or apathy and laziness. Take your pick.

built on the back of inequality and arrogance

It was built on innovation, working hard, and striving to be the best.

The current attitude of people stinks – unless you REALLY want to sit back and watch the rest of the world over-take you? In that case, carry on.

Yup, I’m sure my Grandfather and Grandmother were incredibly lazy and apathetic while they worked many more hours per week than I would dream of cleaning rich people’s houses and doing labouring jobs.

LHS – Member

“Join unions, refuse to opt out of the working time directive, log every hour you spend at work.”

Taking the Great out of Great Britain!

Yes – behave like a civilised country like Germany, the Netherlands or Norway? ~Wehre staff are treated well and productivity is higher as a result

In the rest of the EU its illegal to work more than 48 hrs a week in general.

Right now, a pretty steady 40-50 hours a week. Sometimes more, but never more than 60. I don’t regard myself as working hard TBH.

In my previous life, 60 hours was the minimum I did, simply because the work levels required it. Worst weeks were around 120 hours, but they were usually at the end of big deals – didn’t go home or days at a time!

I’m better compensated now than I was then, but that’s the nature of what I do. I’m still 15-20k underpaid (for what I do), but I’m happy slacking and spending time at home.

Taking the responses to this thread, I’d say Britain doesn’t have any sort of long hours culture.