Working after hours has long been ingrained in American culture as a way to show how much you care about your job, to get ahead, or to appease an intense boss. Being a workaholic is often painted as a virtuous work ethic praised by leaders, a likely vestige of our Puritan roots.
Consider Elon Musk, who claimed to have once slept overnight at the Tesla factory. He’s since gone on record for encouraging similar behavior at Twitter, ordering employees to work “long hours at high intensity.” And after getting some flack for the company’s intense 100-hour workweeks, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon allowed bankers to take Saturdays off but noted that going the “extra mile” can make a big difference.
But as younger generations push back against hustle culture and assert the importance of work-life balance, the value of working overtime has been thrown into question. Now, team messaging platform Slack is here to tell you there’s no use in burning the midnight oil—unless you actually want to.
Surveying more than 10,300 employees globally, Slack found that more than a third (37%) of employees said they work after hours at least once a week. Some claim to do so because they want to, perhaps to catch up on lost tasks or get ahead. More than half (54%) do so because they feel they have to.
But pressuring employees to stay late creates a paradox that makes them less effective—workers who felt compelled by their employer to stay after hours reported 20% lower productivity throughout the day, according to Slack. They also reported more than double work-related stress and burnout, as well as lower levels of satisfaction with their jobs, than their counterparts who clock in a normal nine-to-five.
Those who work of their own accord during post-work hours, on the other hand, actually have slightly greater productivity and wellness scores, per Slack, and don’t report the same amount of negative impact that their pressured-to-work peers do.
Perhaps, then, executives’ fixation on forcing productivity in the form of long nights and weekends (in the manner of Musk and Solomon) is set to backfire, creating a more dissatisfied and therefore ironically less productive workforce.
All about autonomy
Some bosses and executives, struggling to understand how the new way of work would look and worried about an impending recession, developed productivity paranoia after the pandemic hit and began tracking their remote workers’ every move. The verdict is still out on whether employees are more productive while working from home or at the office, but one thing is for sure—no one likes being told what to do.
Research finds that workplace surveillance makes people worse at their jobs and more likely to quit. It’s a time suck on both ends, as workers start to engage in “productivity theater,” spending the time to appease their watchful bosses by making it look like they’re busy after they’ve finished their tasks.
It makes sense, then, that employees would also be less productive when they feel they’re forced to work. Most employees—both those who feel obligated to work after hours and those who don’t—told Slack they’re productive during the day (70%). But the former group is 50% more likely to report that their ability to complete tasks is deterred by “competing priorities” than those who leave at a normal time.
In the end, employees, like anyone, appreciate being treated with autonomy. What’s crucial to remember is that “employees have options,” Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox, recently told Fortune. “They’re not resources to control.”
In fact, it’s better to give employees some free time in their schedule. Half of all office workers say they rarely or never take a break, reporting greater levels of burnout, worse work-life balance, and poorer productivity than those who do, per Slack. Ultimately, giving workers the power of choice in when and how they get their work to done seems to make them better at their job.
