A third of UK workers to stay online over holidays, following global trend:
New research from Slack has found a disconnect between bosses and employees regarding work expectations during the Christmas period, with a third of workers stating they plan to be online and available to work during the holiday season, despite the majority of UK employers encouraging their employees to switch off.
The Slack Holiday Season Survey, comprises responses from more than 2,000 UK office workers surveyed by market research firm YouGov on behalf of Slack, also found that 36% of employees who are available for work will check in on Christmas Eve—even though it falls on a Saturday this year. Furthermore, 19% said they plan to check their work messages on Boxing Day, while 10% will do so on Christmas Day.
With a gap existing between bosses and their employees regarding work over Christmas, it appears that expectations must be clearer. In fact, half (49%) of employees—as well as 50% of bosses—worry that the pressure to be constantly available for work will lead to burnout. Amongst those surveyed by YouGov, 54% are concerned about themselves or their co-workers burning out, with this figure sitting at 51% for bosses.
However, it's not just a mismatch of expectations—53% of those who say they are available to work despite having time off indicated they struggle to disconnect because of their own drive, with 33% of respondents saying it takes them up to three days to switch off during the holidays.
For those who are making a concerted effort to switch off, 72% of respondents believed that having good digital infrastructure makes it easier to show managers, colleagues and customers that they're on holiday and should not be disturbed. Additionally, 61% agree having the right technology in place makes it easier to balance work and private life, with 65% of employees planning to switch their notifications off for the entire Christmas period, and 48% planning to use a status to set expectations about their availability to work.
When asked about their working preferences, 55% of employees surveyed said they would choose to work at a company that offered flexible digital infrastructure and vacation policies, allowing them to work how and when they want.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Thursday December 15, @02:21PM (1 child)
Here is one of the rare cases where a simple (and effective) technological solution exists! If the whole company has a mandatory break over the Christmas period, simply disable all logins during that period. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday December 15, @03:39PM
I've worked with companies that do that, however it is always mandatory unpaid time off. It can get worse for 24/7 operations: my customer worked at the same company as his wife, and during holiday shutdown he was deemed factory critical but she wasn't, so her time off was without her husband. Maybe some families would enjoy that, but I would prefer a choice in those decisions.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 15, @02:22PM (1 child)
> a third of workers stating they plan to be online and available to work during the holiday season
Always available Albert aiming at advancement aloft, accelerating as abruptly as achievable!
At your service, sir!
Personally, I prefer to work smarter, not longer hours, and I look for the same in my colleagues and reports.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @05:13PM
Well you must be the exception.
The places I seem to end up want low salary workers that they charge their salary in rent, then work them like a rented mule. Which they are. Then according to the accounting, whatever garbage they manage to churn out before falling into despair and wandering off is freeee!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday December 15, @02:39PM
Its a weird form of innumerate propaganda where the majority of bosses said to do something, then a vast majority of employees say they will obey, then that's bad, because ... ?
"When asked about their working preferences, 45% of employees surveyed said they would choose to work at a company that forbids flexible digital infrastructure and vacation policies, forbidding them to work how and when they want."
Its like chatbot-GPT got high on digital weed and started shitposting. Its all very well formatted grammatically and the style is impeccable and it makes no logical sense at all and doesn't really mean anything. That's the "AI generated future".
"Hey chatbot I'm pissy about having to work over the holidays, shitpost something whiny for me about the evils of working over the holidays, mkay?"
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday December 15, @03:42PM
Unless I have family commitments, I always sign up for holiday hours. The culture in the office is a warm-down environment, so those days between Christmas and New Year's almost always is long lunches and catching up on my bonus projects I don't have time for. I would rather burn my time off when the weather is nice outside.
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday December 15, @05:12PM (3 children)
I realize that this is the kind of comment that makes me unpopular, but: My whole career as a software developer, I have been listening to co-workers and people on this site and people on the green site complain about worklife balance and the pressure to work 90 hours a week and nights and weekends. My whole career, I have worked 40 hours a week, if that. I have worked a couple of nights when the damn thing broke in the middle of the night. I have worked a couple of weekends when the damned thing needed to be upgraded in production. And I have gotten zero push back from management to work longer hours. Well, not zero. I had this one job in the 90s where they kept pushing the 44 hours a week minimum. And there was a job in the 2000s where they kept pushing the engineers to come in to the office before 10am because it was making the managers look bad (To which one of my co-workers started ranting that he would stop working crazy overtime hours if they made him work mornings, and the manager said "ok".)
My point is, I think most of the pressure toward unhealthy work/life balance (at least in software development) comes from the workers themselves. The people I've known who work long hours do it to get noticed and advance their careers, not because their bosses demand it.
Of course, my experience may be biased by the fact that I ask about work/life balance when interviewing and then take the company at their word.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @05:18PM
The correct way to do it is to bring in foreigners from authoritarian cultures on visas. You barely need to say anything and they'll put their head down and not a whisper of complaint. Perfect order, perfect happiness.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday December 16, @04:32AM (1 child)
It's coming from both sides.
I work on multiple projects / small items simultaneously. It's a struggle to juggle. Right now:
So, for me, it's truly a mishmash.
I care about the quality of my work and quality doesn't seem to be valued these days. (Quality is another internal drive, I have.) have to admit that I'm burning out and it probably comes from this.
[Looking at time] Well, time to step into the fire again and get chewed out for things beyond my control...
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Friday December 16, @01:10PM
I did not mean to imply that I have gone through an entire career without pressure to get stuff done ASAP. There's been plenty of that. But there hasn't been pressure to solve deadline problems with overtime specifically. And I have personally chosen not to add that option to the discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @06:14PM
Some people simply have no reverence for the worship of trees and tinsel and old bearded fellows offering treats to toddlers. Oh the madness!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16, @11:13AM
Checked email and logged out.
Microsoft Teams shat itself one day after a release that affects the entire organization, Microsoft Edge is crapping itself again. The place is just chaos. I logged out. Seriously. I am not being paid to even be involved.