The current economic climate is forcing many white-collar, public sector workers to spend more time at work than the typical 9-5.
However, it was proven that this can have a damaging impact on their mental wellbeing.
A recent study found out that working 11-hour days on a regular basis can more than double a worker’s risk of depression compared to employees who typically work an eight hour day.
More than 2,000 British civil servants who had no mental health problems were researched when the study began in 1991. Six years later, 66 cases of major depression were found in the workers after they received mental health screenings.
Men and women who worked more than 11-hour days had a more than twofold increased risk of depression, compared to employees who spent less than eight hours at the work.
Marianna Virtanen, a study researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health believes that a variety of genetic, physical, and emotional factors can make a person vulnerable to depression. At the workplace, the prolonged stress felt by people with long hours is one of the contributing factors to depression.
Dr Virtanen believes that: “Long working hours are likely to be related to less time to relax and less sleep. It is also possible that excessive working hours result in problems with close relationships, which in turn, may trigger depression”.
Signs of depression can be found in trouble sleeping, feeling stressed, being irritable and dissatisfied, or lacking pleasure in those things that usually make you happy. A depressed person can also be less efficient at their job, make more mistakes than normal and have trouble getting organized or concentrating.
It is important that managers use the information collected by their time and attendance systems to monitor not only the contracted hours of their staff but also the extra hours which employees put to complete the projects.
This can help in taking steps to release some overloaded with work employees. This could in turn increase their overall wellbeing and productivity and prevent a long term absence caused by depression or work burn-out.
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