Any cure for the long hours syndrome?
Jinfo Blog

20th June 2007

By Tim Buckley Owen

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If you work in banking & finance, accountancy or law, or you’re one of the growing band of independent information professionals, then the chances are that you put in more than 48 hours a week at your desk – at least some of the time. According to the latest International Labour Office report on working trends in 50 countries, the British work the longest hours of any developed nation, and the combined growth of service industries, globalisation and the informal economy is the cause. (See http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/kilm/ for details.) Britain negotiated an opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive in 1993. But now it seems people are starting to regret it. Several of the main library & information recruitment consultancies are reporting that candidates are getting tougher about negotiating terms and conditions that enable them to achieve a more sensible work/life balance. Maybe they can afford to. Employers are struggling to hang on to their skilled staff, and signs are that they’ve only themselves to blame. According to the latest annual Recruitment, Retention and Turnover Survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development – www.cipd.co.uk/surveys – most organizations that provide additional training to existing staff say that it has a positive impact. Yet only 29% of employers currently use this initiative. Three quarters of employers who offer flexible working also report good retention results. But only 30% actually offer employees this option, prompting the CIPD to conclude that employers will continue to face problems if they don’t start to take account of employees’ needs as well as those of their business. The situation is particularly bad in London – home to much of the country’s financial services sector and many of its business information professionals as well. The latest CBI/KPMG London Business Survey shows 69% of employers citing the cost, availability and quality of housing in London as one barrier to staff recruitment and retention. (Details at http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/press.nsf/0363c1f07c6ca12a8025671c00381cc7/b474ecfb54559f6c802572e500496265?OpenDocument.) However, if you are thinking of going for the jugular, you’d better be quick. Straws in the wind suggest that the opportunity may not be there for long. To start with, offshoring continues to play its part. A third of firms surveyed by the CBI and KPMG report that they have either already relocated parts of the business offshore or are considering doing so, with financial and IT services the most popular candidates. And finally, official UK labour market statistics for June show a 0.3 percentage points decrease in the working age employment rate over the past year – the lowest rate of growth since 1994. (Details at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0607.pdf.) The decrease is tiny – but there’s no reason to presume that the UK will be global business’s location of choice for ever.

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