Australians are working longer hours and have less satisfying work/life balance than they did five years ago, a new study reveals.
The research, conducted by the Australia Institute, found that Australian employees are working an average of six unpaid hours every week, totaling $9471 worth of unpaid hours over a working year.
Altogether, Australians will work a total of $100 billion worth of unpaid hours this year.
The survey also found that in the last five years, 46% of employees feel they are expected to work longer hours than they have been in the past. 42% of people reported their work/life balance has worsened since 2009.
“The combination of the number of unpaid hours that people are now working – totaling $100 billion Australia-wide – and the fact that a large majority of people reported that their work/life balance hadn’t improved or had gotten worse over the last five years is very concerning. We have spent a decade talking about work/life balance and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference at all,” head researcher David Baker told Women’s Agenda.
“It is also particularly concerning that four out of ten Australians feel the balance is tipping further and further towards work.”
Baker also said work/life balance is not necessarily about the number of hours employees work but is increasingly a matter of how much flexibility they are offered by their employer.
“Having a good work/life balance means having the freedom to work your required hours while being able to keep up other commitments, such as caring responsibilities or seeing a doctor.”
One in five Australian employees said the main factor preventing them from improving their work/life balance was their management not being open to flexible working hours.
Baker said the issue of inflexible working hours is making it very difficult for women with caring duties to achieve the work/life balance they would like. Baker said it was encouraging that awareness about entitlements to flexibility for carers has increased, meaning more conversations are likely to take place about how to resolve the issue in the future.
Associate Professor in Work and Organisational studies at the University of Sydney Rae Cooper said longer working hours and lack of flexibility can have a compounded impact on work/life balance, particularly for parents and carers.
“If one parent is working very long hours, this necessarily limits the flexibility available to the other parent. So flexibility can be limited in ways outside of actual flexible work policy within the workplace,” she told Women’s Agenda.
Cooper said flexibility policies in workplaces have improved in the last decade, but there is still a problematic gap between policy and implementation.
Overall, Baker said the results of the study were not encouraging as Australians are more overworked than ever. But how can we fix it?
“Our government needs to lead by example. It needs to introduce legislation that necessitates openness among employers to having constructive conversations about improving work/life balance. We need employers to be willing to have that conversation also,” he said.