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Long working hours

The impact on workers and how best to approach this issue

Find out more about how occupational safety and health professionals can support people working long hours.

What is the issue?

Longer working hours are known to pose health risks.

Working for 60 hours a week instead of 40 hours can affect you in several ways. You are more likely to suffer health problems, including:

  • neck, back or chest pain
  • stroke
  • heart disease
  • type 2 diabetes
  • stress and burnout.

Working more than 55 hours per week contributed to an estimated 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart-related diseases around the world in 2016.

Environment International Journal

Working long hours is a risk factor for anxiety and depression.

There is often less time to rest and relax and this can result in poor sleep and fatigue.

You can feel an increase in pressure as you spend less time with friends and family. This sometimes leads to personal conflict.

Standards

The first International Labour Organization (ILO) standard was about working hours. The Hours of Work (Industry) Convention 1919 identified a maximum eight-hour working day and 48-hour working week.

The European Union's Working Time Directive 1993 (amended in 2003) set standards for maximum working time and rest breaks. It includes a requirement for regular health checks for those working at night. This recognises that there are health risks specific to night-shift workers.

Common problems

Working long hours can cause a range of problems. Common issues for a worker include:

  • demotivation
  • fatigue
  • increased sick leave
  • substance abuse (to help concentrate for long periods).

For an employer, this often means:

  • high staff turnover
  • increase in accidents
  • lower productivity.

The management of working hours and shift patterns in an organisation usually needs a joint approach from:

  • human resources
  • those involved in work organisation management
  • occupational safety and health professionals.

Policies should be developed that:

  • give a fair share of workload for each person
  • provide guidance on tasks
  • encourage the timely completion of tasks.

Keeping work within specified times is important. This helps people to avoid overwork. Making sure workers are given the right tools and equipment for their tasks also helps.

The ILO suggest a four-stage process for developing healthy working-time arrangements.

  1. Identify

    • Set up a working time/work schedule team and develop an action plan.
    • Before making your action plan, you'll need to collect information to help you determine your organisation's requirements and workers' needs.

  2. Design

    • Review and evaluate the options for working-time arrangements and decide which is likely to work best. You need to think about both both your organisation's and workers’ needs.

  3. Plan

    • Plan the selected working-time arrangements and work schedules.
    • Develop procedures to implement them.
    • Communicate with managers and worker representatives to build agreement.
    • Provide all employees with detailed information about the new working-time arrangements and work schedules.

  4. Implement

    • Implement the agreed pilot phase of the working-time arrangements and work schedules.
    • Evaluate the new working-time arrangements and work schedules regularly.
    • Fine tune as needed for continued improvement.

Develop your action plan

It's not always possible to completely overhaul an organisation’s working-time arrangements.

Working patterns such as overtime, shift work and being on-call are needed in a society that demands 24-hour service.

Some working patterns, such as compressed and flexible-working arrangements, can help workers manage their work-life balance.

What information do you need?

You'll need to collect information before making your action plan. Things to consider include:

  • workloads
  • working patterns
  • any special circumstances about the working site
  • the impact on workloads of any organisational changes
  • worker experience levels and personal needs.

Identify groups of workers who are at particular risk of harm from long working hours. These could include:

  • younger or older workers
  • workers with pre-existing health conditions
  • workers who need to take medicines at a certain time (i.e. insulin)
  • pregnant workers and new parents.

Assess the risks

You need to:

  • consider what risks workers are exposed to from different working-time arrangements
  • establish who may be harmed
  • consult workers and their representatives.

What to include and avoid when designing working-time arrangements.

Use a short-cycle period with regular shift rotas.

Limit shift length to a maximum of 12 hours, including overtime.

Limit consecutive working days to a maximum of six days. This should be fewer consecutive days if shifts are longer than eight hours.

When moving from day to night shifts, make sure workers have at least two full nights of sleep.

Offer workers a choice among the available shifts based on their individual needs and preferences. Be flexible about the timing of rest breaks if possible.

Build regular free weekends into shift work schedules. Each worker should have some free weekends with two full days off.

Assess the needs of each worker individually and adapt shift work tasks. For example, take into account their health and domestic situation.

Plan short intervals between shifts, known as quick returns. Make sure workers have at least 11 consecutive hours of rest between shifts.

Plan early morning shift change overs.

Where possible, avoid night working due to the health risks it poses.

If night work is unavoidable, workers should be given as few night shifts in a row as possible.

Permanent night shifts should be a last resort and only used in safety-critical roles.

    Limit overtime. It should not be a routine part of a working day or week.

    Provide proper compensation. This can be extra pay or time off, or a combination of both.

    Share out the overtime among workers to help everyone avoid regular long working hours.

    Flexible working gives workers the chance to choose their own start and finish times. Often this is within limits set by their employer.

    Be specific about the extent of the flexibility being offered to workers. Your organisation needs to:

    • set maximum daily and weekly hours for workers
    • specify if there are certain hours that must be worked each day (sometimes called core hours)
    • be clear on the decision-making process and criteria for fixing hours of work and granting paid time off.

    Compressed working is doing normal full-time hours in fewer than five days. Usually, this means daily hours are longer.

    You need to consider the benefits and disadvantages of compressed hours. They can support work-life balance for some people but the longer daily hours can also increase the risk of burnout.

    Workers on compressed hours should avoid overtime and long commutes.

    Rest breaks and job rotation can be important to help reduce fatigue and boredom of longer daily hours.

    Make sure there is enough recovery time between shifts.

    Account for changes in risk outside the workplace. This can include long commutes and the impact on domestic or caring duties.

    Reduce workloads as fatigue rises. For example, during the last few hours of a shift. This is particularly important for night shifts.

Health checks

Regular health checks on workers can identify problems caused by work. This is known as health surveillance. Consider if your organisation needs to provide this.

In some countries it is a legal requirement for certain working patterns. For example, the Working Time Regulations (1998) requires employers to provide this for night workers in the England, Scotland and Wales.

Smaller organisations can outsource health surveillance or provide guidance to workers on when and how to seek medical advice for certain symptoms.

Train managers on spotting signs of fatigue in workers and what they need to do.

Monitor, review and update

Regularly get the views of workers about their working-time arrangements. Use focus groups, questionnaires, and one-to-one discussions.

Make sure there is a system for early reporting of problems with working-time arrangements. Monitor any changes to shift schedules.

You should continue to review the effectiveness of working-time arrangements against the needs of the organisation. Things to consider include:

  • incidents – has fatigue been identified as a cause or contributor to any incidents? Has changes to working-time arrangements resulted in more or less incidents?
  • absenteeism – do records show more workers being off without good reason after a change in working-time arrangements?
  • staff turnover – has the working-time arrangements been raised as a reason for leaving the business?

Provide information to your workers so they are aware of the potential impact of different working time arrangements on their health. This might include information on:

  • the importance of sleep
  • the link to sleep deprivation from long working hours and some shift patterns.

This guidance page provides an introduction to the subject. IOSH members can access more in-depth resources from Blueprint, our all-in-one package for career and self-development activity. If you're not a member and would like to gain access to these indispensable guides, join IOSH.