to get narked at people's managers thinking 45 hours a week is outrageously long hours

[eggyface]

(sorry long, wanna avoid drip feed)

I work in white collar officey work. Classic making presentations, analysing data, sort of stuff. I remember when I was starting out in my industry, working 9.30 until 6.30 with hardly any lunch break was fairly usual. I wouldn't think that was a hard week for someone at the start of their career, learning the ropes. (A hard week might be be two or three nights until 10 or 11, or putting in 5 hours on Saturday).

We work for clients, so the ethos is that we need to service all the projects that come in, but on the other hand we are a big rather stuffy company which doesn't have much of a 'hungry' mentality for work. In our office a manager polices the diary of their team and if someone wants to nab a junior, their manager will often say they can't work on your thing because they're already working enough hours (i.e. 40).

When you're senior and working a longer week than that yourself, this is very annoying!

I know that it's important to protect people's rights and to create a culture where people don't work long hours for the sake of it. And yes, if I'm working long hours that's my problem and I need to organise my diary. But there's got to be some flex, hasn't there? I'd expect all the juniors to be keen to take on a new project even if it made them prioritise work over home life for a bit. I did that and I enjoyed the responsibility and opportunity to shine. AIBU to think that 45 hours is totally reasonable level of overtime to expect in a ft job (NB not paid, can take time off in lieu but in practice this might not happen as you'd be busy the next week)??

DH's last job (he's in IT) was for a justifiably much maligned service company. This company did have some positives in its working culture. All overtime had to be approved. There was no late hours culture, because that overtime was paid at a rate above the standard hourly rate. If someone higher up, like you, OP, wanted people to work on a contract they had secured, then if the team that DH was on was approached, then it was quite rightly pointed out that this team have have certain responsibilities,with certain deadlines, so which one did they need to drop in order to attend to this particular piece of work.

Those managers are not protecting their junior staff just to make your job more difficult. By doing so, they are doing their own jobs properly by managing their own teams' workloads and ensuring that they can complete the work they already have.

9-6 regular hours here. Junior staff get paid overtime above that, senior do not. We work for fee earners who regularly work overnighters. Seems fairly standard in commercial organisations in London

duchess of cuntbridge haha you are right! I have learned my lesson and no mistake. Next AIBU i put up will be about someone parking on my child's face or something. No arguments.

LaurieMarlow So Iona, what do you do if the deadline for a piece of work doesn't get met?
If it is due to the fault (laziness, overlook) of an employee -> consequences to the employee. If it was forseeable, then it's a management issue. If I am the manager, I realise that I've shot myself in the foot and lost the business. If I am the employee I consider if this is a one-off or a regular occurrence, and if the latter, whether it's worth looking for a new job with a more able manager. (There is also the option of quietly taking over managing things without the manager noticing it, someone in my family is exceedingly good at this; I am not.)
But in any case, it's just work, Laurie, nothing more. :) It's not your life, it's only your job. (If work has become your life, seek help :) ).

at eggyface and her new thread idea.

gymbum er sort of - don't want to be too specific but it's closest to a sort of quick-turnaround management consultancy. There are no standing 'teams' as such, as people have described on here - a "my team" who are managed by the same people who run the projects. There are a load of people at every level who are composed together into different teams on an ad hoc basis. So 'manager' here means someone who looks after the pastoral care of the team members. I'm something more like a project leader, whose main responsibility is delivering the work.

I do love that someone has pointed out the analogy of working an extra month a year for free.

That's a fabulous and terrifying mental image.

ionaNE I wouldn't do work which was 'only' work. I'm pretty passionate about it and the content of it is really important. Like my hobbies if it didn't get done I would feel personally frustrated and sad. It sounds a bit like you are spending your 37.5 hours (precisely) each week doing something you don't care about?

Sometimes deadlines aren't met because two really important, fascinating, interesting bits of work come in at the same time and you're so excited to work on both you try and get both done. Sometimes, a piece of work which looked simple turns into something more complex. Sometimes you have a less productive day, or the team does, especially if we are writing something creative together - we're not machines. I think if the work's worth doing, it's worth doing overtime for, personally. But I say again, I'm not saying juniors should be forced to do free overtime. I'm saying they shouldn't be protected from the business consequences of this natural fluctuation in work by jobsworthy middle managers.

Eggy I understand and can also see your frustration. YANBU.

On a side, I got seriously flammed once on AIBU. Next time where one of these.

Excuse typos. Baby I one had whilst on phone.

in my experience working extra hours for free makes NO difference when the redundancies come round. Or indeed the pay rises.

you do your job to the best of your ability in the time available.But unless you are on mega-megabucks, have a life and go home on time.

Don't your managers have targets around ensuring that their people are utilised effectively? Part of our managers' performance targets were around ensuring that staff were working productively for x% of their time. If their staff were failing to take leave, regularly working too many hours, overcommitted according to the plans, unavailable for training, then all that reflected poorly on the managers when it came to deciding if they were performing as expected.

i work in a creative industry where long hours are often applauded and juniors exploited - it is the pits. In fact we talk about this at work A LOT. My employer has recently lost a very key member of the team, a woman with years of experience and who is fantastic at her job. She was the ONLY person in the department on a part time contract, a much coveted part time contract. But she was working hideous hours in those three days to get the jobs done and spending time when she was off reading and sending emails. I work full time there at the moment and I am exhausted. I do over my hours - I regularly work through lunch for example, I regularly work at full pelt from the minute I get in until the minute I leave. Five hours extra on top of this, every week, alongside looking after kids and commuting would push me over the edge. There are not enough people to do the work and the sickness rates are high. But the culture of the industry has been like this for years and it totally effects our output. I am very strict with myself and my team and try to work effectively when at work so I can totally ignore the place the minute I leave the building. I do this so my family and friends don't get shortchanged.

We are certainly going backwards in my company for flexible working, job shares, part time roles etc. And for an industry which is dominated by women, this is shocking. I wish there was a manager enforcing a work life balance at my employers. We wouldn't lose so many talented women if there was. As is is, our very high up boss actively frowns on women who request flexible working. She believes it to be shirking... as opposed to doing less work for less money. I have lost all respect for her as a result of this. The old boss LOVED the job sharers as she believed they worked harder and were full of fresh ideas.

You may have loved being at work all hours but you have to respect that for some people their families come first. And rightly so. I don't know who said it, but someone one said that people on their death bed rarely say that they wish they'd worked more...

And can I put my hand up and say that I would never NEVER prefer a herogramme to actual cold hard cash for extra hours worked. Never.

eggyface, fair enough - however, I would not like such work/job. What I enjoy, am passionate about, is outside work. It is part of my private life. My work is what I do for money. If I had enough money not to have to work, I would spend all my time about hobbies and things I feel passionate about. In my experience - both personal and within my family - this is one of the keys to a good work-life balance and a stressfree working life. Whenever I had a job I felt passionate about, it ate into my private free time, so in essence my hobbies and the relationships I wanted to cultivate. Even if overtime is paid, it is not worth it because even if you are super-passionate about something, I suppose 8 hours a day of it is enough to be passionate about one thing? Also I find that if I am passionate about work, I get involved in management and all sorts of workplace issues, sometimes outside my actual role, on the basis of "we all chip in". This, again, is not a recipe for a good work-life balance and stressfree working environment. In my last job I was a public servant. The job was interesting and I did it well. Then, come 5 o'clock (well, figuratively, because I was on flexi), I locked everything into my drawer and went home to my loved ones, hobbies, etc. And this is the only kind of job I am willing to take again. However, each to their own. :)

I manage a team and while I only work my hours in the office and try to take lunches to lead by example I have found that juniors now are much more inclined to have very firm opinions about what they will do and wont do. For example if they are on a half day they will expect to leave to the minute of when they got in and not when they have finished some work etc.

Maybe we were just complete doormats but they are very ambitious but yet less willing to put themselves out. slightly entitled.

I think a lot of this has to do with your salary and professional status. In schools, during the day, teachers and TAs work as hard as each other. However, the fact that a TA is paid considerably less than a teacher (combined with the fact there is very little career progression / job prospects) means their responsibility ends there. The teacher, however, has a contract that says {in effect} "will work however many hours it takes to get the job done".
Now, I'm only quoting teachers and TAs as I know about their contracts, but I imagine the same thing translates to lots and lots of different workplaces - some people are on a very different contract from others.
The other thing is the age / stage of life of the employees. In my 20s, I could just make decisions about my own life / work hours for myself - once I had dc, I couldn't make a decision about what hours I was going to make my CM work to (or change them once signed the contract) - I had a contract with her, and she was entitled to finish when that contract ran to.

There's a thread on here this week where the poster asked what hours they and their dps work - or what hours they are out of the house. It turned into some kind of 'boasting fest' of people trying to outdo each other as to how long they are out of the house. Just made me think 'how sad' and the old adage of 'working to live, not living to work'.

Yabu, if you are getting paid to work a 40 hour week you should work a 40 hour week. You should not be put under pressure to work more, especially to further someone else's career.

I work for a fair employer who pays me well for the hours I work. If I stay late I get the time back. If I switch my shift to help out then it's a straight swop.

I do not expect more junior employees to be a slave for more experienced staff. All full time employees where I work are contracted for 35 hours a week. I work 14 hours a week.

Modern, progressive, caring employers do not exploit there staff and if the work load results in working longer than your contracted hours then your employer should investigate this and ensure there is appropriate resource available.

If we take too firm a line though then lots of us will find our jobs outsourced to India, most companies in my sector have already done that so yes we absolutely need to have a good work/life balance but we also need to keep costs down and make money.

I work in a similar environment to the OP but I have a rare beast of a boss who appreciates work/ life balance but admits that it isn't a steady life in our line of business. But he doesn't care about presenteeism, only that we deliver and the clients are happy.

But those surveys, positive feedback forms are really important in my company because they contribute to your bonus which is out of profit share. So while it may feel like a free month, actually the bonus can be substantially more. So I may prefer long emails of praise especially if they tick off my objectives because my bonus amount is dependent upon it. Also promotion.

But this is very dependent upon the company. When recruiting, it is made clear that this is not a job for someone who needs to be somewhere every day at 6pm because that isn't the nature of the work.

OP your role is probably quite similar to my DH 's. The difference is they have a resourcing manager who tracks what people are working on and any capacity they have plus handles leave etc. Each individual has a career coach (not sure of the actual term) who basically looks at their performance and development but doesn't generally work on the same projects. People are measured on their utilisation rate among other things .

It sounds like the way your system works is a bit dysfunctional.

All this talk of being 'recognised' and going above and beyond and praise being better than a payrise? Absolute joy for the ears of the people making the profits.
I don't need praise to feel good about myself. I value myself and my time and would expect to be treated with respect, not a cash cow for the business.
I always do my best and work hard..and that should be enough. Get more bloody staff for those hours that are needed instead of using people like unpaid slaves.

YABVU.

I work the hours I'm paid for. I get my work done to a good standard within that time. If I can't, then either there is too much work and they need to employ extra staff OR I am not managing my time correctly.
I have young children, why would I want to essentially work another day per week for free at the expense of my family? It might be different if it was voluntary, paid overtime. But unpaid, expected overtime (especially when you're also blocking them taking time in lieu) is slave labour. It shouldn't be allowed. You want them to work 7am til 8pm 6 days a week? Then pay them for it and make it clear in their contracts.

In my job, I can work flexibly and from home if I have no meetings. I absolutely love my job and my managers. My health and my family always come first and I can manage my work/life balance in a way I've never been able to before. And because of that, my morale is high, and I actually want to please my managers so make the extra effort when necessary.

I think if the work's worth doing, it's worth doing overtime for, personally.

So it's worth paying for overtime for, then.

I'm saying they shouldn't be protected from the business consequences of this natural fluctuation in work by jobsworthy middle managers.

Quite right: management shouldn't be protected from the business consequences. Again, voluntary paid overtime creates the right feedback to the business.

You stated quite clearly above that the business model is to under-resource and then seek new staff as work comes in. Rather than over-resource and pay for the slack time.

This can be OK if you pay overtime. What's not OK is to expect the juniors to pay for your choice of business model.

Oh, and I'm another one who used to do hours like this and unpaid overtime.