When an 80-Hour Work Week Helps

Long hours benefit some employees by signaling their abilities

The culture of overwork—with the expectation of incredibly long hours and interrupted vacations—is often criticized for its negative impact on workers and organizations. Workers suffer from burnout, are not as productive as they think they are, and make mistakes, as research has made overwhelmingly clear. Because of this, overwork can cut into a company’s bottom line. But as the evidence against overwork mounts, understanding why it is still so widespread becomes even more important.

…

Want to continue?

By logging in you agree to receive communication from Quality Digest. Privacy Policy.

Create a FREE account

Forgot My Password

Comments

80-Hour Work Weeks Are Often Just Waste

When I first started learning quality improvement, one of our IT system architects realized that he and his team had self-managed themselves into 80-hour weeks creating system architectures that nobody wanted. A classic case of overproduction.

Being busy is not always productive. Being productive may sometimes look lazy.

Rework is not productive. Scrap is not productive.

If a third of total time is dedicated to waste and rework, it can easily devour an employee's time and productivity. Eliminate the delays, defects and deviation causing the overtime and everyone can go home on time.