Work has been taking precedence in our lives for decades now. With the advancement of technology, a work-life balance seems impossible to achieve. Everyone is available around the clock, and the fear of losing jobs makes us incentivize long hours. You might even think that any leisure time and self-care is a luxury. But actually, it is not.
A lack of work-life balance not only costs you your mental health, but companies also suffer in their profits and employee engagement.
The work life balance statistics below will show you its current worldwide status, how the pandemic and remote working affect our personal & professional lives, and some tips that can come in handy to increase work-life balance.
Recommended reading: Working From Home With Kids: A Writer’s Guide
Table of Contents
How Many Hours Are We Truly Working?
Whether you’re a content creator or any kind of knowledge worker, the way you work has changed since the coronavirus pandemic. Many of us started to ‘sleep at the office’ instead of ‘working from home.’ But were things indeed so bright before the pandemic?
- According to the American Time Use Survey done in 2019, full-time employed persons averaged 8.5 hours of work time on weekdays and 5.5 hours on weekend days and holidays.
- A Rescuetime Survey of 850+ knowledge workers showed that 92% of the surveyed regularly worked on weekends and evenings, even before the pandemic.
- Another study done by Rescuetime in 2019 showed that 40% of those studied used their computers after 10 PM. This does not even include the sliding smartphone Slack and/or email check.
And it is not limited to the post-working hours.
- The same study showed that 28% of the workers started their day before 8:30 AM, and 5% started even before 7 AM.
- In all, the study confirmed that 26% of the work is done outside regular working hours.
We were in an overworking pitfall way before the COVID crisis.
6. A report from Gallup in 2014 showed that adults in the U.S. worked 47 hours a week, almost a full workday longer than what the 9-5 should ideally entail.
With the coronavirus crisis, the working hours have only increased.
Remote Working: How People Are ‘Sleeping At The Office’ When Working From Home
Most of us have been working from home since March 2020 owing to COVID. Initially, the pleasures of working from home took over us, but soon, the boundaries between our homes and office swept away completely all across the globe.
- Microsoft’s Work Trend Index Report released in 2020 found Australia has the highest increase in workday span at 45%.
- The same study showed that India had the longest workday span of the surveyed markets.
- A study by TOG of 2000 UK workers found that 51% of those surveyed worked outside of their contractual hours since lockdown. In 5 months, an average UK worker had put in extra 59 working hours or seven working days.
All this extra work must mean a ton of productivity, right? Not so much.
Is Working More Hours Actually Productive?
All this extra work must have you thinking that you are getting a lot of work done. But that is not true, even in the pre-pandemic era.
- The 2019 Rescue Time Study confirmed that workers average just 2 hours 48 minutes of productive device time in a day.
11. This might be because the knowledge workers were found to check email and Slack every 6 minutes. This varies across job titles, too – software developers had spent 21% of their time on communication while product managers spent more than 37%.
- The State of Work Report done by Workfront in 2020 also confirmed that employees spend only 43% of their day on their primary job duties. The primary culprit found in this was wasteful meetings.
- Another Rescue Time Survey also showed that while only 38% of people work fewer than 8 hours a day, only 5% of people finish their daily tasks every day.
- 25% of the employees in the study said it is because of “too much work” but more people placed the blame on “lack of clear priorities.”
- The State of Work Report done by Workfront in 2020 also confirmed that employees spend only 43% of their day on their primary job duties. The primary culprit found in this was wasteful meetings.
- Another Rescue Time Survey also showed that while only 38% of people work fewer than 8 hours a day, only 5% of people finish their daily tasks every day.
- 25% of the employees in the study said it is because of “too much work” but more people placed the blame on “lack of clear priorities.”
Burnout: Pre-Pandemic
Burnout was a cause of concern even before COVID-19 exacerbated it. The numbers here are proof:
- A study done in 2019 by Gallup surveyed 7500 full-time employees, out of which 28% of the employees reported feeling burned out at work “very often” or “always.” The top causes of burnout included unfair treatment at work and unmanageable workload.
- 63% of these burnout employees are likely to take a sick day leave, and 23% are likely to visit an emergency room.
Some reports show that the pandemic has made things worse. But there are also reliable studies pointing out otherwise.
Burnout & Remote Working In COVID-19 Pandemic
Has the world embraced working from home after almost a year, or has it worsened employees’ already poor conditions? The numbers are a mix of both.
- The Microsoft Work Trend Index Report of 2020 showed that close to one-third of workers in India cited an increased rate of burnout in the past six months.
- The lack of separation between work and life was a primary stressor among 34% of the workers, followed by unmanageable workload and/or working hours at 28%.
- This trend is also highlighted by another study evaluating 204 workers, where 54.9% of employees said that the housework responsibility has increased during the pandemic.
20. 92.2% of the employees in this study also said they are craving to go back to their regular routine.
- The Deloitte Millennial Global Survey of 2020 shows another picture. Millennials who reported being stressed all or most of the time dropped from 50% pre-pandemic to 42% in this survey. For GenZ, this number fell from 52% to 44%.
- More than 60% of the population also said that they would like the option to work from home more frequently after the crisis is over.
- The State Of Remote Work 2020 by Angelist and Buffer interviewed 3521 remote workers worldwide and found that 98% of the people would like to work at least some of the time remotely for the rest of their careers.
- The CNBC Monkey Workforce Survey done in May 2020 showed that remote workers had a happiness index of 75/100 while it was 71/100 for those who continued going to their offices.
While the numbers are unclear, burnout remains a problem for companies and employees, costing them employee absenteeism, poor mental health, and high attrition rates.
Work-Life Balance: Why It Matters And What You Should Do
Mental health has become an important topic of conversation. The pandemic witnessed an empowering rise in talks about mental health, anxiety, and transparent conversations.
- A Twitter report found that 54% of people said that their mental health has increased in importance this year vs. last year.
- The same report also showed that the WFH conversation has gone up by 375%. Tweets expressing workplace frustration also increased by 39%.
Work-life balance and its relation to mental health are bound to stay in the conversation. So, what can you do to achieve a greater work-life balance?
- Many of us try to binge-watch our burnouts away, according to a study by YellowBrick. When surveying 2059 millennials, 16% chose to binge-watch a series on Netflix/Hulu to ease burnout. But that would be similar to replacing one poison with another. Binge-watching is terrible for your health.
So, try this instead. This study helps you identify the signs of burnout and shares handy tips on preventing it. It is specially tailored to the COVID WFH scenario:
Companies can meet their employees halfway. But to implement this, companies first have to care about their employees enough to provide them with a work-life balance. For instance, an Indian startup posted an “internship” on LinkedIn, saying someone who believes the “work-life balance mumbo-jumbo” shouldn’t apply.
Caring for your employees’ well-being should be at the core of your company, regardless. Gallup lays out the best practices for all the core aspects of a company that can lead to burnout:
The numbers prove that despite long working hours and always being available, employees may not get their best work done.
On the contrary, it impacts their mental health terribly. Achieving a work-life balance helps both companies and employees not only save some dollars but enable better productivity and enjoyment at work. Make work-life balance a norm.