The Advantages and Disadvantages of Overtime For Businesses

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Overtime – We all do it sometime.

At one point in our lives or another, we will end up working overtime. Sometimes we are coming up to a dire deadline, and it simply cannot be avoided, maybe you have a deal to close or are covering for a colleague. 

Busy season, or perhaps you just need to make up that extra cash before a birthday, wedding, vacation, or coming up to the holidays. 

It’s normal for it to happen every now and again, however, when it becomes something of a normal occurrence, you need to ask yourself if it is worth it. 

For companies, having too many people picking up overtime, or expecting people to always pick up overtime is kind of a black mark on the company as a whole. 

So, what is good and bad about working overtime, for the employee and the employer? Let’s start off by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of overtime for employees and then look at employers. 

What Are The Advantages? – Employees.

The first advantage most employees will have is making extra money. Everyone wants to do so, and when we hit hard times, money from overtime can give us a major boost to pay off debts, and get our finances straight. 

But you need to manage your money well, and overtime is not always a guarantee. 

It can also help you climb that theoretical ladder. Doing your work correctly and well is often enough to help you climb the ladder, however, if you work in a competitive atmosphere, overtime can give you that extra boost you need to impress your managers. However, remember not to overdo it. 

When you have extra time to complete tasks, you are naturally more productive, and sometimes putting in overtime means extra hours in a quieter environment. It can give you more peace and quiet to really focus on what you are doing. However, if you find yourself doing this just for the peace and quiet, ask if maybe you should be having a different shift. 

Having overtime is better than working a second job. We will not lie and say that the economy is in such a good place that everyone only needs one job to survive. Sometimes we require multiple incomes, and having overtime can prevent us from having to find a second source of income. 

Finally, you can sometimes build better relationships with other colleagues who also do overtime, helping you to build more functional bonded work relationships. 

What Are The Disadvantages? – Employees. 

However, working overtime can affect your physical health. Just a few more hours can be a big change. Try to avoid sitting the whole time, take little walks. If physical jobs take a sit down, it can cost you more in medical bills to cover the costs of what it does to you, than what you earn from doing it. 

Mental health can also suffer, remember we were not put on this earth to work all the time, even if it sometimes feels that way. We sometimes feel pressure to do overtime because of how much work we need to do or because of our superior’s demands, but it can lead to insomnia, alcoholism, depression, anxiety and so on. Your mental health matters first.

Similarly, you need your personal time, family time, hobbies, and socializing. Cutting these out can make us drained, tired, and miserable and will cause real harm to our relationships. We require this time to be ourselves and be human, so make sure you do not let work come before you! 

Finally, too much overtime can lead to us being unsatisfied with our jobs. We can enjoy a job but if we are there 80% of our waking hours it gets tough to love it. We lose our creativity and passion. It lowers our productivity and we fall flat.

Always ask yourself how many hours of overtime is worth it, set boundaries and limits. 

What Are The Advantages? – Employers.

For employers the advantages of overtime are different, while employees tend to use it for stability and sustainability in their financial lives and work-based social lives, for employers the reasoning tends more towards business stability. 

Overtime for employers means that they have a more flexible workforce, and therefore can deal with tricky periods more easily. Busy periods, absences, staff shortages, and bottlenecks are much easier to handle with no need to recruit more staff. 

It also aids in job disruption avoidance, in which workload might be harder to share around. Similarly, it also gives the ability for repairs and maintenance to be carried out outside of traditional working hours. 

It makes business maintenance easier for the employer, and keeps their staff secure. If you have a team of staff that are happy to work overtime, you will never need to hire when business factors change. You can maintain a solid unit of employees which can be highly advantageous. 

What Are The Disadvantages? – Employers

However, even though having staff willing to do overtime and having overtime as a functional part of the workplace can be very beneficial to staff in some ways and the stability of the company, it has downsides too. 

First and foremost you will have to deal with the expense of overtime rates in the company, which is often above traditional salary. 

It also can introduce inefficiencies in the employees’ ability to pace their work, especially if there is poor management, they may slack, and it may become necessary for them to make up what they’ve lost through overtime. This is true on both sides of the scale. 

Let’s not forget how regular and long working hours can affect employees’ health, work production, and their home lives. It is very important in every way to promote a healthy work-life balance in your business. 

Always remember that no person is put on this world to work, instead we want to work and do well, but we need to be able to have personal lives outside it to fully enjoy what we do. Be this for someone in management or general staff. 

Fatigue, and illness can be an issue too, which can lead to unsafe working conditions, and absences. Expectations can also lead to resentment and inflexibility when withdrawn are also something that can happen as a result. 

Be mindful of expectations and the adverse effects of overtime, as an employee and an employer.