CNBC reported a bit ago that working more than 50 hours a week may not be doing you, or your employer, any favors:
Nearly half of U.S. workers say they routinely put in more than 50 hours on the job each week, often without overtime pay. But employers should probably start politely declining the “free” gift, new research suggests.
So-called “work martyrs” give hundreds of hours in free labor to their employers every year, encouraged by always-on gadgets, work through nights, weekends, and vacations. Trading sleep or fun for unpaid work is obviously a bad deal for employees, but there’s a growing body of evidence that even apparently “free” labor might not be a good deal for employers, either.
Research that attempts to quantify the relationship between hours worked and productivity found that employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours—so much so that someone who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those extra 15 hours, according to a study published last year by John Pencavel of Stanford University. [Read more]
Anecdotally, this seems to be true for me. You?
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