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Here's how to leave work on time today

Where are you going to be at 5pm today? If your answer is 'in the office', think again - you should be walking out and making your way home. The UK suffers from a pervasive, endemic culture of long working hours. Even more reason to take advantage of the fact that today is 'Work Your Hours Day' - and leave on time. 

It's not just so you can be in front of the telly, G&T in hand, by 7pm. There are health benefits, too. A recent study published by the Ohio State University found that - for women in particular - long working days can actually be risk. Researchers found that women who put in long hours in their careers greatly increase their risk of developing life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease and cancer.

Working weeks that averaged 60 hours per week or more, over three decades, were found to triple the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and arthritis. The risk begins to climb when women put in more than 40 hours and takes a decidedly bad turn above 50 hours, researchers found.

We congratulate ourselves for a successful balancing act where we take conference calls in the gym, do emails on the beach and spend the children’s sports’ day logged into the laptop

Crucially the same pattern was not seen in men. In fact, they got healthier the longer they worked. Researchers believe it is because women face additional pressure in their home lives.

It's why, more than ever, we need to promote better work life balance, highlight to employers the dangers of long hours, showcase a better way to work, and remember why having the time to look after our relationships, our home lives, and our wellbeing, is so essential.

And we certainly need a reminder.

A study released in September 2015, by the Trade Union Congress showed that, after a long period of decline, the number of people working more than 48 hours per week has risen again, with 13 per cent of the workforce now putting in such a lengthy week at work (up 15 per cent from 2010). What’s more, the longer hours we’re putting in don’t seem to be translating to higher productivity for UK businesses - an efficiency conundrum that’s leaving economists and policymakers scratching their heads, and the rest of us wondering how we can work smarter, not harder.

It's definitely time to tackle 'Burnout Britain’’.

So how can we work smarter?

It makes sense that as we strive to manage our working lives, flexible working patterns are becoming increasingly popular. 

Uptake of flexible working has been boosted by supportive legislation (though it's slow progress) and a more widespread understanding of the advantages to businesses and individuals – such as increased efficiency and productivity, better staff retention and loyalty, improved employee health and wellbeing.

However, while flexible working may be in the process of transforming the way we work to supremely positive effect in many sectors, where such arrangements are partnered with highly pressured and increasing workloads – as is the case in many traditional City professions - it’s possible that neither employer not employee will feel those benefits, and that needs to change.

And unless you work for a company like this innovative Dutch firm, which is pioneering a way to make its employees go home on time, you need to take charge of the situation yourself.

Our work/life balance suffers

We might be able to work more flexibly and work anywhere - as technology has improved - but our capacity to draw a line between ‘work’ and ‘life’ has diminished. More common than ever is a working style where we leave the office at a ‘reasonable’ hour, go home and enjoy a short evening with family or friends – and then get back online to work remotely.

We admire and congratulate ourselves for what we perceive as a successful balancing act where we take conference calls in the gym, do emails on the beach, and we spend the children’s sports’ day sitting in a corner of the school football pitch logged into the office with a laptop and a dongle.

But as work encroaches, so the quality of our home time suffers commensurately.

As our work/life balance becomes a work/life blend - where the two amalgam so seamlessly that we can barely tell where one ends and the other begins - we should be questioning business models that see intelligent and productive employees endure extreme working patterns, routinely including weekends and often involving missed holidays and important personal occasions. Not to mention potentially damaging our health in the long-term.

So let’s try to go home on time, as often as we can.

We all know that someone who is stressed and regularly sleep deprived is cognitively less effective than someone who is over the drink-drive limit; we know that more diverse workforces, those which are the product of more family-friendly working practices, are safer workforces. Employers and employees together need to work harder to support a true productivity-based culture of reasonable working hours, where time is respected and flexibility is offered, and taken, in good faith.

Top tips for leaving the office – and stopping work – on time

  1. Plan to leave earlier than you need. If you really want to be out of the door by 6pm, set 5.30pm as your deadline to get everything done – something will always crop up last minute to delay you.

  2. Make sure you’re prioritising. There’s nothing worse than staying late purely because everyone else is, or to do non-time critical work. Make sure if you’re putting in extra hours, you’re emphasising productivity.

  3. Get some fresh air – you might think you have no time to take lunch, but a short break can clear your head and have a real impact on the afternoon’s productivity.

  4. Start saying “no”. If your day is crammed, don’t be afraid to be assertive and highlight your workload. If you need to, engage your boss and colleagues to ensure the right work is prioritised.

  5. Don’t over promise; if you’re asked to do a task just before leaving the office, clarify whether it can wait until morning. Don’t jump to stay late, or offer to do it later that evening from home, unless it’s clearly time critical.

  6. Keep your distance. Only you can create and enforce your boundary between work and home life, and it’s so easy to slip and respond to your blackberry’s flashing light. If you find email encroaching into your evenings, set yourself a defined window to check what’s going on at work, and stick to it.