Work is an essential part of our daily lives, with the United States having about a 40-hour work week. However, when you work over 40 hours, the Fair Labor Standards Act in the US considers that overtime work, unless you are exempt. During overtime work, the United States requires employees be paid overtime pay, which is about one and one-half the amount of a regular pay rate.
Although working overtime may occasionally sound great in terms of extra pay, it is not that beneficial to a person’s health if you are working excess overtime. Excess overtime could have significant negative impacts on a person in many different ways.
Health Problems
Along with physical exhaustion through burnout, working excess overtime can cause other health-related problems. When you are working excessive overtime, you have a higher chance of getting physically injured. Some health problems include:
- Mental Health Problems
- Muscle strains
- Body injuries
- Increased blood pressure
- And more.
Along with bodily injuries, working excess overtime causes you to have less time to cook healthy foods or exercise, which could, in turn, cause you to lead towards more health problems.
In terms of mental health, working excessively causes your mental health to dwindle down. People who work more than 40 hours a week were associated with having an increased chance of experiencing depression and anxiety as opposed to those who did not work excess overtime.
Increased Turnover Rates and Recruitment Costs
As a business in general, companies that have their employees work excessive overtime tend to have an increased turnover rate, which in turn causes them to have to hire or recruit more employees. This is due to the fact that employees who are overworked tend to be unhappy with their jobs. Being unhappy with them causes employees to leave and give a bad reputation to the company, which could make the company have a harder time recruiting new people. Even when they hire new people, the cost to train and get them settled in their new positions is still pretty expensive.
In other situations, businesses can also be tricky when it comes to overtime. Some businesses like to hide or manipulate the times people take when doing overtime in order to save money from having to pay an increased amount of money to overtime workers. In doing so, the company could have a strained relationship with their employees and cause even deeper complications with their workers. Companies should avoid this however, as it is not worth making your employees unhappy with the company as it could lead to them leaving the company. However, in the event that this does happen to you, an experienced unpaid overtime lawyer may be able to help you.
Decreased Productivity and Quality of Work
Another consequence of working excess overtime is decreased productivity. Throughout a normal day, whether it is at work or at school, most people struggle to be focused on a single thing all throughout the day. According to Business Insider, the ideal work-to-break ratio was 52 minutes of work, followed by 17 minutes of rest. However, when people are working overtime, it may usually be because they have a lot of work they need to tend to and are probably trying to force themselves to focus on their work all day. When a person is overworked, it makes it all the more difficult to focus on their responsibilities, especially when our brain only allows us to work efficiently at around one-hour intervals.
Burnout
Burnout is a type of stress people tend to have when they are physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted over something. Working overtime could cause an employee to burnout as they could be tired of working the job. Furthermore, working excess overtime would lessen the amount of time you have to yourself outside of work or even reduce the amount of time you have to rest. Experiencing burnout can lead to lower productivity levels as well as low motivation in-and-outside of the workplace.
No Work-Life Balance
Maintaining a work-life balance can be pretty difficult under normal circumstances, but when you work excess overtime, the ability to achieve a work-life balance is basically thrown out the door. When an employee is required to work extremely long hours, they may not have any time after work to attend to any leisurely activities or other responsibilities in life. This can lead to strained relationships with friends and family members or dissatisfaction with your own life on personal hobbies. Unhappiness in other aspects of your life can lead to poorer results in the workplace and even detrimental stress on yourself.
Overall, overtime can be a nice system to be able to get paid more while also being able to finish last minute work. However, working excess overtime can be detrimental to your work and personal life and may even be detrimental to employers. It can lead to both mental and physical health problems as well as productivity and motivation problems. Both employees and employers should ensure that whenever there are opportunities for overtime, that the conditions be fair and less stressful.