The pandemic has made us work longer hours – but are we getting more done?

In March last year, many office workers eagerly anticipated a new way of working. Often thought of as the only positive from the pandemic, working from home meant no commute and we optimistically shared our excitement for how we might spend the extra hours usually wasted on a train. Some people planned to take up new hobbies or learn a language. Others wanted to make up for years of early alarms and lack of sleep.

Over a year later, many workers have found themselves simply working longer hours instead. As living rooms, bedrooms and even beds became offices, the boundaries between life and work became harder to distinguish. And with no social plans, it became increasingly difficult to justify not finishing off a bit of work in the evenings or over the weekend.

With no one in the office, the extended hours people began to work weren’t noticed by managers. And for people in junior levels, working longer hours likely felt like the only way to stand out to their superiors, without any face-to-face interaction. 

NordVPN Teams, a business support company, released data to Bloomberg revealing that in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US people are working more than two extra hours since the start of the coronavirus crisis. In the UK, we have increased our working week by almost 25 per cent and are finishing at 8pm each day. By January this year, workers in the UK were logging on for an average of 11 hours a day, which is seven hours a week over the legal British 48 hour working week.

After a year of loneliness and grief, add burn-out to the mix and it is little wonder that Britain is facing a mental health crisis. But until now, particularly for those of us without children, it has been somewhat manageable (if unhealthy) due to the sheer lack of anything else to do. With lockdown easing and our social lives slowly taking shape again, this is no longer the case. But with new, longer working hours – how will we do it all? Is it possible to reduce our hours but maintain the same amount of work, or have we gone too far to go back?

It all depends on whether the extra hours we are working are actually increasing our productivity. Pre-Covid, the UK already ranked highly for long working weeks with 12.2 per cent of the population working very long hours (50+), according to the OECD Better Life Index. This is more than most of our European neighbours, but less than, say, Turkey (32.6 per cent) or Colombia (26.6 per cent). Meanwhile, the countries with the highest productivity levels are; Ireland (39.7 hour average week), Norway (38 hour average week) and Switzerland, where only 0.4 per cent of employees work over 50 hours per week.

A key reason for the slowdown in productivity but the increase in working hours is our move to virtual meetings. Quick questions that could have been asked across the desk now need to be asked over a pre-scheduled Zoom call, and meetings that could have been done over the phone are now often turned into long-winded video calls. Researchers at Harvard Business School and New York University found that the number of meetings during the pandemic increased by an average of 12 per cent; a lot of the working day is wasted in unnecessary meetings, in between meetings or trying to get hold of people. 

Harvard Business School’s research also suggests an engaged employee is 45 per cent more productive than a merely satisfied worker and an inspired employee, who has a profound personal connection to their work, is 55 per cent more productive than an engaged employee. But employees overworking or burning out are much less likely to be inspired or engaged, making the extra hours put in counterproductive.

In 2019, an office equipment company, Fellowes Brands, partnered with behavioural futurist William Higham to model the future of the office worker. The result was Emma, a terrifyingly deformed model woman, with neck strain, poor posture and varicose veins from sitting down too much, dry red eyes from too much screen time, swollen wrists and ankles, sallow skin, a disturbing grey-white skin tone, stress-related eczema, red forearms and thighs from laptop burn and other grotesque ailments. Whilst Emma is a “worst case scenario” and intentionally exaggerated (the brand offers solutions such as standing desks and air purifiers), the project was an effective reminder of the serious physical effects of overworking.

It is true to say the pandemic created an opportunity to reevaluate the way we work, but many have been too quick to declare the great work-from-home revolution complete. The disparity between working hours and productivity is not a new discovery – the phrase “work smart, not hard” comes to mind. But the extra hours working rather than commuting are new and shouldn’t be absorbed into the working day for the sake of it. So, if you haven’t stood up from your desk in a while or drunk some water, do it now – you don’t want to end up like Emma.