How much unpaid overtime is reasonable in a £50k role?

[Strumpetpumpet]

I’m 6 months into a new job, which was a bit of a promotion for me. I enjoy it on the whole but am finding there’s too much work to fit into a standard working week. My 2 colleagues who are the same level as me, seem to work lots of evenings and weekends to get everything done. I’m 55, menopausal, don’t sleep well and am always tired, and I just don’t want to have to work tons of additional hours just to keep up. Am I just out of touch and should I expect to be working late nights and weekends at this level?

@SkankingWombat This is all well and good in theory but what if the consequences of allowing things to fail are just too great to ignore.

That's the responsibility of senior staff. If you cover for them, they never have any reason to address the problem.

With public services, its not the senior staff that are the problem. Its the government. And I don't know anyone in their right mind who wants the government to let public services fail and for healthcare/education etc. be exclusive to the wealthy.

None. I mean I might do extra hours if needed, but I'd take it back as time in lieu as quick as possible.

So what do you do instead? Continue to moan, optimistically hope those controlling the funds listen, all the time burning staff out so they permanently leave the profession and/or fall ill themselves, further burdening the system, and in the end it all falls to pieces any way? It's brutal, but you have to minimise the casualties. Nothing will change until failure happens and the powers that be can no longer ignore it. In fact, even the general public often don't accept there is a problem until things fail and it directly affects them (and it is then often their ire that forces politicians to take action). The consequences of failure for the service users are awful when talking about essential services, but those are already inevitable 😔 Unless the wealthy and powerful suddenly all have a 'road to Damascus' moment - unlikely! - their hand must be forced.

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I won't do unpaid overtime. 50k +

@SkankingWombat It is not always the case of employers not be wanting to hire more staff. It is really hard to recruit skilled and competent people in lots of sectors. I am not sure did this is down to education, training, Brexit meaning lack of EU workers, Covid and lockdowns or all of these things.

All of those barriers can be solved with funding and/or incentives from those who hold the purse strings and make the laws.

£60k and I do unpaid "on call" but the phone rarely rings. I probably do a few hours in the evening every other day out of choice I prefer it that way cos its quieter with no calls/emails/Teams. In previous role I was on £50k but lots of unpaid overtime including weekends, one of the reasons I left, was affecting my mental health. In this role, I've learnt a lot about being better at delegating to those I line manage, I have weekly 1:1s with them and ensure they do not have a large workload or are doing overtime.

I don't think your salary is all that relevant, it's more about what's in your contract. If you are paid for a 37 hour week then in my opinion, that's what you should work.

If it says something about 'additional hours as and when needed' then I would see that as meaning you work until the job is done and you are paid a salary which isn't really about hours, but more about getting the job done.

If I found myself working so much that I was run into the ground though, I'd have a conversation with my manager. You need to have some kind of work life balance, whatever your position/ salary.

45k and very occasional unpaid overtime if we've got a special event or big project. My boss is very much of the opinion that we "work the hours required" whereas if I've put in extra hours recently I tend to take it back unofficially on a wfh day by clocking off a bit early or taking a longer lunch break. I make sure my team do the same. Because its rare it's usually only an hour here or there so doesn't have a big impact.

In my old role I was on 28k and some weeks would work an additional 5/6hours on top of a 45hr week. At the time I was fully engaged and didn't mind but slowly realised what a toll it was taking and we always said without staff dedication the company would collapse in the mud. I'll not work for a company like that again!
As they saying goes - you can dedicate your life to a job, but if you die, the job advert will be out within the week.
An evening or weekend at work to the company might be a few emails sent or an excel spreadsheet filled in. For you it's a dinner with family or putting the kids to bed etc that you'll never get back. I know which is more important to me.

At that salary level I would expect anyone to be able to balance their work load for maximum effectiveness without supervision and without clock watching but if the volume of work to be done exceeds what they can achieve in normal office hours I would expect them to be making a business case for either taking on new staff or restructuring responsibilities to enable the additional work to get done, rather than simply increasing their own hours long-term which is an inefficient way to deal with work because work done by overtired and overworked people is done badly.

Of course sometimes there are complicated deadlines and for specific reasons task B which will take c70 hours isn't possible to start until information A is known and that's not released until 5 days before critical deadline C and then you just have to put in the stupid hours but you take TOIL afterwards.

If the business is actually expecting excessively long hours and doesn't care about keeping a workload within the limits of what can be achieved within normal office hours then get yourself out of there, they are a bad and do not deserve good employees. Possible exception if the business is beginning to founder and is at risk of going under but there's a good chance of recovery and future thriving if all employees give a bit more to get the business through a temporary rough patch, because then the alternative is everyone losing their job and working some longer hours might save it. But in those circumstances I would still be job hunting.

No overtime should be unpaid no matter what the salary if it can't be done within your paid hours then they need to employ an additional person

Not at all. I work in education though am an accountant not a teacher, hence the workload and lack of money to pay any additional staff 😂 strike away, I’m fully behind you all x

Working in education is a difficult one.
It's very easy for posters to say if the work can't be done in normal hours they should employ more people. But if there's no money to employ these people and that work absolutely still needs to be done, then what choice is there (apart from look for a new job)?