9 in 10 UK professionals now working outside of office hours
A clear separation between work and personal life has long been an important barometer of good wellbeing, but the breakdown of traditional ways of working in recent years has blurred the boundaries for many.
New data published by recruitment firm Hays shows that most UK professionals have found a healthy split, with 58% saying they have a positive work-life balance. However, 91% of professionals say that they work outside of contracted hours to some degree, with 57% believing they do so often.
Even dedicated time away from the workplace may not serve as a respite for many professionals, with almost a third (31%) feeling unable to disconnect from work when on annual leave, the group said.
Despite this inability to disconnect, Flexible ways of working remain popular, and the majority of those we surveyed currently work in a hybrid way (55%).
It’s clear that flexibility over ways of working has a direct impact on employee wellbeing, with over four-in-five (84%) of professionals believing that the option to work in a hybrid way has positively impacted their wellbeing.
Despite the popularity of flexible working practices, the past year has seen multinational organisations make headlines for asking staff to return to the office (RTO) more frequently, and 38% of professionals say that related news coverage has negatively impacted their wellbeing. The data suggests that these RTO reports have a greater impact on women’s wellbeing (42%) compared to their male counterparts (32%).
What’s causing the most stress?
The data shows that most employees (54%) often feel stressed at work, with 14% feeling so very often. Senior professionals may be particularly affected, with over two-thirds (64%) of directors and C-suite level professionals saying they often feel workplace stress.
Correspondingly, more than two-fifths of employers (42%) rate overall staff stress levels as being high, 43% believe stress levels have worsened over the last 12 months, and a third (33%) believe employee wellbeing has worsened in the past year.
When it comes to certain aspects of wellbeing, physical wellbeing had the highest volume of positive responses (60%), followed by social wellbeing (53%) and mental wellbeing (52%), with financial wellbeing being the lowest rated (43%).
RTO is not the only thing which is stressing out workers. According to professionals, the main work-related issues contributing to negative wellbeing are high workload (46%), inadequate compensation and benefits (39%) and lack of recognition and appreciation (36%).
Two-thirds (66%) of employers believe that high workload is the most common cause of negative employee wellbeing within their organisation, with this being the case for over three-quarters (76%) of public sector organisations.
