The depressingly familiar picture of Britain as a nation of long hours junkies, slaving over their terminals way beyond their supposed finishing time, involves a sometimes fatal price. Those who work three or more hours of overtime a day are 60% more likely to develop heart trouble, and potentially die of a heart attack, than those who work a normal seven-hour day, according to important new research published last week in the European Heart Journal (EHJ).
The research underlines just how harmful regular overtime can be. Three big studies in the last decade have found that long hours have an association not only with cardiac ill health but also with an increased risk of succumbing to stress, depression or diabetes too. While European neighbours cut back working hours, the UK's distinct, damaging long-hours culture persists.
The recession has made things worse. "Many people do a lot of overtime and there's increasing evidence that it causes problems with both physical and psychological ill-health – heart disease, stress, depression and other conditions", says Dr Steve Field, the chairman of the Royal College of GPs and a family doctor in Birmingham. "I see this frequently as a GP. Patients come in who are stressed and have high blood pressure because they are working longer and longer hours because they feel they have to demonstrate their commitment in order to keep their jobs."
The EHJ research was conducted among 10,000 Whitehall civil servants by academics led by epidemiologist Dr Marianna Virtanen of University College London. "The people I see like this are senior managers in both the public sector, such as the NHS, and the private sector", says Field. "You can get a spiral of despair, where the culture at the firm or organisation becomes such that everyone there is working longer hours and, before they know it, they've gone too far." With that increasing stress comes growing isolation from normal, non-work activities – friends, family, hobbies. "Marriages come under pressure and tensions can rise with children, who don't see their mum or dad because they are off to bed before they get back. Personal relationships suffer, and they can end up having no one to talk to about their situation. The recession has made all this worse."
The never-go-home-on-time brigade face different pressures from those who are unemployed – joblessness last week hit a 17-year high of 2.51m. A much smaller research exercise last week, by the workplace firm Water Wellpoint, confirmed the scale of excessive hours being worked. Among the 152 participants, 72% said they worked over their hours, while 27% said they worked late every day. "Our survey showed that binge working is ingrained in today's work culture," said the company's Rory Murphy.
Paul Sellars, a policy adviser to the TUC, says that the European Working Time Directive specifies a maximum 48-hour working week for good reason. "Forty-eight hours a week is where people's health becomes potentially compromised," he says. "Harmful effects of long hours start about then, though anyone working 60 or more hours a week is at an extremely acute risk of developing ill health linked to this". Worryingly, then, Office of National Statistics data show that about one million of us frequently work more than 48 hours, and 600,000 beyond the danger level of 60 hours. Last year, work-related injury and ill health resulted in the loss of around 29m working days, of which some 11.4m involved stress, anxiety and depression. Plus around 15% of us work some form of antisocial hours, another recognised cause of fatigue, poor sleep, unhealthy eating habits, stress and thus ill health.
Richard Jones of the Institution of Occupational Health and Safety suggests that employers could offer free health MOTs, lay on healthy food in their canteen and organise at-work physical activity sessions and wellbeing programmes. Work-life balance could also be improved, probably more directly, if personnel were allowed to work from home more often, to reduce time spent commuting; or enabled to work more flexibly; or given a recovery period following a busy time; or allowed to use tele- or video-conferencing so they spend less time travelling.
But the lingering recession, high unemployment and billions of pounds of impending cuts in public spending ordered by the new government mean that probably won't happen. Instead of reacting to yet more job insecurity with yet longer hours, though, workers should learn to leave on time, be more active and enjoy as full a life as possible, says Jones. "The paradox in all this is that not working long hours is more likely to give you a successful career," he adds. "Your performance will be better with a healthy work-life balance than if you spend all your time trying to prove that."
