Do you ever work on the weekends

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Asking only when it's non contracted.

Sometimes I enjoy pre-doing a few tasks and lightening my workload for the next week.

To everyone working unpaid overtime at weekends - please stop. Nobody will remember you for it and when you're near the end of your life you'll never think 'i wish i spent more Sunday afternoons getting on top of my emails.'

Work to live, don't live to work. I say that as someone who is very contentious and ambitious at work. But also efficient!

Same here @Sayoonara , I’m in the US so it’s still the evening here.

Doing an hour or so now will make my Monday so much easier as I won’t also be bombarded with emails and questions!

@Invisimamma We hear what you’re saying but if it makes Monday less stressful for me, I’d rather do it tbh.

No, not any more. I used to, to catch up or get ahead, but now the only thing I do is check my calendar on a Sunday night. I work 80% hours over five days, and I stick to that.

No…but if I do it earns me AT LEAST double time. I’ve been in for 2 hours sometimes but then I get paid for 8!

No, I used to but I don’t touch my work tech out of hours anymore. I literally shut everything down at 6pm on Thursday and open it at 8am on Monday.

That’s what happens when you erode goodwill.

My job is flexible. I fit in household jobs, trips to post office etc, in and around working at home. So part of that flex is that I also pick up work at weekend and evenings. Works perfectly for me.

No way!

After over 30 years of being contracted to work weekends, now my job is Monday-Fri and that’s what I do!

I absolutely love my weekends off and protect them.

If I don’t log on at a weekend, no one will die, nothing will not get done within my contracted hours and I don’t feel pressured either.

I realise how lucky I am to say this and probably unusual.

Rarely. Only if there is something urgent (rare) or a deadline we are close to (less rare, but maybe twice a year)

I don't expect any of my team to do it either, so if they say they have too much on to manage within their hours, we look at ways to redistribute their work.

Edited for typo

I'm a teacher and dropped to four days as my wellbeing was suffering

I never do PPA at weekends and work occasional days off to clear exams which we do a lot

In summer I exam mark to top up salary so I am working 7 days for about 6 weeks. For which I am paid handsomely.

I will reply to emails on days off too

Absolutely not. I don't get paid enough to justify doing that. If I can't get it done in working hours, that means the company is giving me too much to do and is their issue to sort out.

Obviously if you work flexibly and choose to do some of your work at weekends that's a different scenario but my role isn't flexible in that way (we have to be logged on between 9-5 Monday to Friday).

Yes. I work flexibly so sometimes work on a Sunday evening to give me a few hours flexibility during the week. I work as a lecturer so vacation time easily makes up for it.

No, not anymore. I used to work a full weekend day, but after nearly 20 years, I couldn’t keep going. I work about 10 hours in school most days and that’s plenty. It does mean I’m constantly behind, but that’s how it is.

Often. Mainly as I take my child to football and I use the time to sit in the coffee shop and catch up on admin.

I used too in my old job when I covered resourcing because it 100% benefited me

I could get done in hour and 1/2 on Sunday what would take me all morning on Monday then have a very relaxed start to the week

I have a part-time office job and I also do freelance work.

I would never do any weekend or evening work for my office role. I have strict boundaries in place for that role. They don't pay me or value me enough for me to do anything more than my contracted hours!

I do some work at weekends for my freelance stuff because I enjoy it.

Not any more. Unless there is a genuine emergency. I found that it was giving an unrealistic idea of what I could get through, and it was addictive. ‘Just let me clear my inbox’ became more and more. I don’t think it’s the equivalent to flexibility during the week honestly, because it means you never get a full switch off from work, and there’s a price to pay for that. Unless you’re running your own business, and even then!

I had to completely reframe my approach to my weekends, away from getting straight/getting sorted for the working week ahead, which was becoming all-consuming, more towards doing things I enjoy so I was basically too busy to do hours of work. And it’s been fine, everyone has coped. I’ve said no to pointless busy-work, again, that’s been fine.

It has been a complete game changer for me. I also carve out an hour a week for life admin, so I don’t do that at weekends either! And household jobs are during the week only (obvs would clean kitchen after cooking, load dishwasher, put a wash on, but no hoovering/cleaning bathrooms etc etc etc).

Sometimes. My job is pretty flexible in that we're explicitly allowed to flex our days. If I have something Monday morning (like a school play, which I have next week), I'll do a couple of hours Sunday evening and then log in late on Monday. I'll have my work phone on me for any messages (not during the actual performance obviously) but probably no one will even notice. My work is long projects, so as long as the deadlines are met, shifting some hours around doesn't make a difference. If I wanted I could start late Monday and finish late, instead of doing work on Sunday, but both would involve evening working because I will always stop work on time to do pick up, dinner and bedtime for DDs. I'll then pick it up again after they're in bed.

Yes but because my job is fully flexible, so it counts as work hours and I can do less during the week. I don't have a partner, DC are adults, so there's no real difference to me between week days and weekends. I wouldn't do it if I wasn't being paid for it!

Not since I left teaching.

To me one shows goodwill by working a bit extra to meet the odd dealine through the year, or covering someone's work occasionally who is off sick unexpectedly. When working extra becomes a daily expectation things gone to far - it's just papering the cracks, and an employer should be figuring out what the issue with workload is, and finding a solution. It's not a solution to just routinely expect people to work additional time for nothing.

It's different if you're young, ambitious, and still learning, and to become more experienced you WANT to learn additional things by doing them. As long as it's with a view to you being noticed, and being considered for promotion when the time comes then I don't see the issue with that. Routinely expecting young junior staff at basic grades to work unpaid overtime is just plain wrong.

Same!

This thread should be linked the next time someone moans about WFH people going to the gym/school play/post office on "work time". Many people find the flexibility works both ways and that's fine

That's not unpaid overtime is it though? That's working the hours you're paid to work on a flexible basis to suits you and your employer.

I'm talking about the people who are putting in whole extra shifts at the weekend or logging in out-of-hours and getting nothing in return.

No. Boundaries are important.

Academia did its best to ruin them and I've put them back in now I've moved away from it. No working at weekends.

I'm an academic. I work whenever the DC aren't in the room basically. Every morning, every evening, when they're at school, if they go and play for an hour. Laptop out, straight to the next heap of crap to wade through!