Taming the overtime monster for work-life balance

Andrew Laing, Solicitor and Health & Wellbeing Champion at COPFS and member of the Lawscot Wellbeing Steering Group, talks about the motivation for moving away from a long-hours culture, in response to another question we received from our 2022 annual conference.

Should long hours be the exception, not the rule? It can be managed on an occasional basis, but is it sustainable when it’s continuous over the long term?

One of the reasons I studied law, rather than medicine, was on the basis that I thought it might involve having a better work-life balance. As a small child, my mother was an exhausted junior hospital doctor in Edinburgh and some of my earliest recollections were waiting for hours on end outside the Western General in the family car with young siblings, for my mother to finish a marathon shift. Shifts that would start on one day and finish 16, 24 or 36 hours later.

Such working undoubtedly took its toll on my mother and her young family. We saw so little of her. Whilst I have grumbled from time to time as a solicitor during my 30 plus years in the profession, my working hours have paled into insignificance compared to what was expected of doctors in the 1970s.

The long hours culture however remains a live issue for the Scottish legal profession. There are inevitably a number of drivers which can lead to solicitors and staff in our profession working excessive hours. These include pressure to generate sufficient chargeable hours; high expectations of clients; professional pride; and the sheer volume of business for which we may be responsible. Many court practitioners, for example, will have regular experience of dealing with challenging casework during the day and dealing with preparation and/or other work in the evening.

But whilst there will be occasions when long hours may be unavoidable, it seems to me that we should be working hard to not work so hard. There is the old business cliche of working smarter not harder and there are examples of companies – Microsoft Japan, Perpetual Guardian, Tower Paddle Boards and Rheingans – who have either moved to a four-day week or compressed hours and who report to having improved productivity.

There are many strong arguments out there for long hours indeed being the exception, rather than the rule. Whilst such reports often seem counterintuitive, it is clear that our own wellbeing and that of our staff and colleagues is a paramount consideration not only for the individual but for the wellbeing of the business. A study by Gallup in 2019 found that there are true score correlations between employee wellbeing, employee productivity and firm performance taken across all industries and regions. That study focused on four key performance indicators: customer loyalty, employee productivity, business profitability and staff turnover.

I am fortunate to be part of an organisation which recognises and values staff wellbeing. A significant development occurred some years ago when it procured time and attendance software. All staff are obliged to use it, with the benefit that employees who have banked hours for working additional hours can arrange to take “flexi time” off. The software encourages staff to take proper lunch breaks. The organisation also provides opportunities for staff to work alternative working patterns or compressed hours and there is a culture which seeks to ensure staff take their full leave entitlement. These developments have encouraged a much healthier culture in the organisation, and it seems to me there is much less of a culture of long hours and “jackets on chairs”.

Lastly, there are opportunities for firms and organisations to offer flexibility in where staff work. During the pandemic many of us were required to change our working practices and, for some, there was the eureka moment of discovering that some work can actually be done effectively in a place other than the office. For a number of staff who are able to work part of their working week at home, or at a location closer to home, they have seen an improvement to their homelife balance, and whilst continuing to work hard, are overall spending more time in their homelife than their working life due to decreased commuting time. Now that’s smart. There has also been the benefit of significantly reducing carbon emissions associated with commuting, a factor that is only going to become increasingly important.