As business owners, we can easily fall into the trap of believing that the more hours we work, the more successful our businesses will become. If there is too much to do, we start earlier. If we are behind, we finish later. If something needs doing, we sacrifice the weekend. But are all those extra hours actually making us more productive? The evidence suggests that they may be doing exactly the opposite.
According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, the average actual working week for a full-time worker in the UK is 36.6 hours. Yet for many business owners, a working week of 50, 60 or even more hours can quickly become accepted as simply part of running a business. The problem is that hours worked and productive output are not the same thing.
More Hours Do Not Necessarily Mean More Output
Research by Professor John Pencavel, published in The Economic Journal, examined the relationship between working hours and output. It found that productivity does not continue increasing at the same rate as working hours increase. In other words, there comes a point where putting in another hour doesn’t produce another hour’s worth of useful work.
That is something I have experienced personally. Some years ago, I was involved in turning around a failing business. I was working 18-hour days, six days a week because, at the time, I believed that was what was necessary to get the business back on track. I managed to maintain that pace for around three months, and then one day I fell asleep at my desk. It was quite literally a wake-up call.
I took a couple of days away from the business, rested and returned refreshed. What surprised me was what happened next. I started getting more done in around seven hours a day than I had been achieving during those incredibly long working days. And I got something else back as well: time for friends, family and myself.
Rest Isn’t a Reward. It’s Part of Being Productive
One of the mistakes business owners make is treating rest as something we earn once all the work has been completed. The problem with that approach is that the work is never completed. There will always be another customer to contact, another email to answer, another problem to solve and another idea to work on.
Research into shorter working weeks provides some interesting evidence about what can happen when people are given more time away from work. A major UK four-day working week trial involving 61 organisations and around 2,900 employees reduced working hours by 20% without reducing salaries. Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that 71% of employees reported lower levels of burnout and 39% said they were less stressed than before the trial, while sick days reduced by 65% and the number of employees leaving participating organisations fell by 57% compared with the same period the previous year.
Perhaps most importantly from a business owner’s perspective, revenue did not collapse because people were working fewer hours. Among the 23 organisations that provided revenue data, average revenue actually increased slightly, by 1.4%, during the trial. That doesn’t mean every business should immediately move to a four-day week, but it does demonstrate that reducing working time does not automatically mean reducing business performance. Sometimes the opposite can happen.
Being Busy and Being Productive Are Very Different Things
This is something I regularly discuss with business owners. Ask someone whether they have had a busy day and they will often say yes. Ask them what they actually achieved and the answer can be very different. A day filled with emails, telephone calls, meetings, interruptions and dealing with other people’s problems can feel incredibly busy without moving the business forward. Productivity should not be measured by how many hours you spend at your desk. It should be measured by what those hours produce.
Interestingly, the four-day week research found that businesses didn’t simply remove a day’s work and hope for the best. They changed the way they worked. Common changes included shorter meetings with clearer agendas, periods of uninterrupted focused work, reducing unnecessary email traffic and examining business processes to find more efficient ways of working. That is good business practice regardless of whether you work three days, four days or five.
There Will Always Be Deadlines
Of course, there will be occasions when long hours are unavoidable. A major order needs completing. A customer has an emergency. A deadline has to be met. Something unexpected happens and everyone needs to pull together. That is business. The important thing is recognising these periods for what they are: exceptions. If you work until midnight for three nights to complete an important project, recognise that you need some recovery time afterwards. The danger comes when temporary additional hours gradually become your normal working pattern.
There is also a health consideration. Research from the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization found that working 55 hours or more per week was associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease compared with working 35 to 40 hours per week. Working excessively long hours isn’t simply a question of work-life balance. Sustained long working hours can have much more serious consequences.
Take Control of Your Time
So how do you start working less without the business suffering? Start by looking at where your time actually goes. For one week, record what you do and how long you spend doing it. Then look at every activity and ask yourself:
- Did this genuinely need doing?
- Did I need to do it personally?
- Could somebody else have done it?
- Could it have been automated or systemised?
- Did it contribute to the objectives of the business?
- What would have happened if I simply hadn’t done it?
You may be surprised by the answers. Business owners often tell me they don’t have enough time. In many cases, the real problem isn’t a shortage of time. It is how that time is being used.
Your Business Should Give You a Life, Not Take It Away
I don’t believe the objective of building a successful business should be to create a job where you work longer hours, carry more responsibility and have less time for yourself than you did when you were employed. A successful business should ultimately give you choices. It should provide financial security, certainly, but it should also give you the opportunity to spend time with your family, enjoy your interests, take holidays and occasionally switch the phone off without worrying that everything will fall apart.
If the business cannot function without you constantly being there, working longer hours probably isn’t the solution. The solution is to build a better business. Working less doesn’t mean caring less about your business. It means becoming more focused on what actually produces results and recognising that your own energy and time are valuable resources that need managing just as carefully as the finances of the business. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop working.
How ETC Can Help
At Executive Training & Consultancy, we work with business owners who are spending too many hours working in their business and not enough time working on it.
If you would like an objective look at where your business is today, take advantage of our free two-hour business review. We will identify the issues that may be holding it back and give you practical actions you can implement immediately.
Call 01384 355444 or email enquiries@exec-tc.com to arrange your review.