Why Working Less May Make You More Productive

Working long hours can be dangerous for mental and physical health. Overwork can lead to everything from poor communication skills and decreased productivity to impaired sleep and even depression. Still, employees are working more and longer hours. According to the US Government Accountability Office, working very long hours may increase the risk of certain health conditions, such as heart disease and stroke.

More hours worked doesn’t necessarily mean more (or better) output. In fact, the easiest way to help an overworked team become more productive may be to help them work  less.

It sounds counterintuitive, but less sometimes really is more.

Read on to learn about burnout and how you can help your team do more (and work less). At BambooHR, we have the right tools to optimize employee wellbeing in your workplace. Start from the ground up. Build the foundations, and cultivate an environment where people are happy and productive, without feeling the resentment of being overworked.

Burnout Is a Workplace Epidemic (and It Might Be Your Fault)

The result of working too much is often increased stress, frustration, burnout, and low productivity at work. But how do they reach this point?

To understand the impact of overwork, first, we need to understand why people are working more. When it comes down to it, there are two possible reasons why employees burn the midnight oil:

1. Their managers expect them to
2. They feel like they have to

While these might sound like the same thing, there’s a key difference between them.

Expecting employees to work too much is a management issue—a sign of toxic workplaces where employees have no choice but to be overworked. They fear their jobs will disappear if they don’t work longer and harder than everyone else.

Celebrating the always-on hustle culture does nothing but stress out your employees and can even hurt your bottom line. According to a recent Gallup study, people working in companies with bad management practices are 60% more likely to experience stress than those with good management.

But why do employees experience burnout in workplaces that aren’t forcing them to work long hours?

The answer is more complicated. Often, it comes down to a combination of unfocused work time, guilt, ambition, uncertainty, and a desire to prove themselves in a competitive marketplace.

Regardless of whether it’s the fault of your organization’s management style or hustle culture, if your employees are overworking, they’ll get burnt out. They’re stressed, unfocused, and distracted. This means they’ll end up working longer hours but getting less done in that time.

It’s a lose-lose.

Not only is this inefficient, it can lead to increased turnover. According to a McKinsey survey, employees experiencing burnout are six times more likely to quit. And it can increase the sick leave people take, too.

Working Too Many Hours Can Affect Your Happiness

The number of hours you work affects your productivity and happiness. Most employees approach ‘unhealthy’ territory when they work for more than the regular 40 hours, as this can lead to burnout. Employees are aware of this, too, with 58% of them saying they’d prefer a 4-day workweek over a pay rise.

But even with these preferences in mind, working overtime is common, especially if you’re a business owner. But it can be counterproductive and even dangerous to one’s health if taken too far. It’s concerning, then, that more than 50% ‌of US employees work more than 40 hours per week, with an average of 46 hours of weekly working time.

Too Many Hours of Work Can Decrease Productivity

One reason for low productivity is that even though our social culture often equates overtime with success, working for long hours week after week can reduce output and foster burnout. Especially today, with a multitude of apps and devices that keep us more connected than ever, it’s become harder and harder to disconnect from work completely.

It’s no surprise that being busy and overwhelmed are, in fact, barriers to success. They lead to exhaustion and stress, which make employees more likely to make errors and suffer from mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, as well as disturbed sleep, and cognitive decline.

Does Less Work Make You More Productive?

It may seem contradictory, but it’s true—working less can make you more productive. Limiting your organization’s working hours encourages employees to work smarter, not harder or longer. This leads to improved job satisfaction and lower stress levels. Not to mention, working less leaves more time to exercise and engage in wellness activities that promote mindfulness, boost creativity, and foster resilience.

This free time can help reduce how often your people are sick and increase their overall health and happiness—setting them up to do their best work day in and day out.

After all, we’re humans, not machines, and it’s wise to live and work following our own nature. Being realistic, not idealistic is key. We don’t have an unlimited supply of energy and focus; we need to refresh this regularly.

How to Help Your Team Do More (and Work Less)

What can you do to help your team work less, feel less stressed, and be more productive?

The book  Time, Talent, and Energy  identifies three trends in companies with the highest levels of burnout:

• Excessive collaboration
• Weak time management principles
• A tendency to overload the most capable with too much work

To give your employees more time, focus, and productivity, you need to help them disconnect from these issues. Let’s look at how you can do that:

1. Streamline Collaboration

First, you need to identify the collaborative processes and company practices that lead to burnout.

Time spent on collaboration has ballooned in recent decades, but while there are positive aspects to collaboration, there’s a dark side as well. This could include team meetings, for example, that are used to keep hybrid and remote workforces connected.

Too many meetings can be counterproductive. A recent Atlassian study found that 72% of meetings were ineffective. Respondents found that, instead of these get-togethers ironing out issues, people actually often have no idea about next steps, or who’s even leading the conversation.

How to calm the chaos? Many of these meeting habits and internal processes you put in place to  help  employees can lead to burnout and wasted time if not re-visited. Instead, you need to reflect on and identify these overloads, and trim them back.

2. Build Better Time Management Practices

Make this a team effort: work with your team to set realistic expectations.

While writing his book  Master The Moment, Pat Burns interviewed employees at 50 companies and discovered that many of the time management issues employees face can be traced back to poor leadership, including:

• Not knowing what work to prioritize
• Having trouble saying no even when their workload is full
• Feeling overwhelmed with too many tasks
• Procrastinating or not finishing what they start because timelines aren’t clearly set
• Always being in reactive mode due to an unclear strategy

Most employee time management issues like these result from uncertainty. Team members don’t know where to put their efforts, so they try to take on  everything, which isn’t practical.

Instead, help your team establish a productive daily routine that balances time for heads-down work with staying up to date on emails and meetings. Try time blocking, a reset approach called “bare minimum Mondays,” or even something as simple as setting aside mornings for focused work, leaving only afternoons available for meetings and calls.

3. Reduce the Workload on Your Best Workers

Protecting your team from burnout isn’t just about how to work less on the job. It’s also about their ability to disconnect at the end of the day—an issue faced particularly by remote workers. Research has consistently found that people who can disconnect from work are less fatigued and have far lower rates of procrastination, greater engagement at work (i.e. flow), and a better quality of life.

The easiest way to help your team disconnect from work is simply to let them know it’s OK for them to push back or speak up when they’re overloaded.

Changing your company culture needs to start from the top. Create policies and rituals that promote work-life balance and recognize (but don’t celebrate) when people are putting in necessary long hours.

Balance Benefits Everyone

According to most studies (and most anecdotal evidence, too), the more people find work-life balance, the more productive, creative, and happy they become. Helping your employees avoid overworking and encouraging them to disconnect from their jobs appropriately is a win-win. They’ll enjoy greater health, wellbeing, and job satisfaction, and you’ll see them do more of their best work in less time.

Find Out How Your Employees Feel

If you don’t ask, you’ll never know how your employees feel.

Often, they may suffer in silence, and then voila, they leave for pastures new. Look to prevent this from happening. Find out how your employees really feel with BambooHR’s automated surveys to gather valuable feedback from employees.