Analysis: A US court case has raised questions around the culture of long working hours and the boundaries between work and the rest of your life
A lawsuit in the United States, which was settled this week just before going to trial, raised important questions about the boundaries between work and the rest of your life. A young junior banker at the investment firm Centerview was given an important assignment on a high-profile project that sometimes required working far into the night. After working consecutively for several days until 2am, she disclosed to her employer a diagnosed medical condition that required her to get eight hours of sleep a night on a consistent schedule.
American disability laws require organisations to make reasonable accommodations for several types of disabilities, and the company initially gave her a guaranteed window from midnight to 9am when she would not be required to work. Three weeks later, she was fired: the company claiming that she could not fulfill the essential functions of the job if she were not available to work between midnight and 9am.
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The employee filed suit for discrimination based on her disability. In order to prevail in this lawsuit, her employer would have to convince a jury that working around the clock was an essential part of her job, and perhaps wisely, they decided to settle.
The job of a junior banker in this type of firm often requires bruising hours, sometimes as long as 60 to 120 hours per week. This requirement is not unique to junior investment bankers. Elon Musk expects employees at his various companies to work 80 to 100-hour weeks, and he has recently declared war on weekends and 120-hour workweeks.
The question this case raises is whether it is reasonable for an employer to expect or require this type of schedule. Long working hours can have serious effects on the physical and mental health of employees. Similarly, long working hours contribute significantly to work-family conflicts and can have a long-term impact on marriages and children.
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Why, then, do so many people compete to join firms that will eat up their lives? First, the rewards can be substantial. The average salary for a junior investment banker in the US is approximately $250,000 (€212,500). There is also a prestige factor: high-intensity jobs are most often found at prominent firms, and long working hours are often (mistakenly) treated as a badge of honour. Long working hours can be seen as a sign of the importance of what you are doing. After all, if your job entailed pointless paper-pushing, you would probably not be asked to come to work at 2am.
Long working hours are customary in some occupations, and the cultures of many organisations encourage employees to devote themselves almost exclusively to work. The lawsuit against Centerview asks whether these hours are essential to performing the job, and the answer is probably no.
In fact, there are reasons to believe that longer hours do not contribute to performance or productivity. Rather, there is a U-shaped relationship between the number of hours worked and productivity. Too few hours lead to a loss in productivity, but the same is true for too many hours. The sweet spot is probably in the neighbourhood of 50 hours per week and working substantially more than 50 hours per week often leads to lower levels of productivity.
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You can sometimes make a case for the need to work until 2am. For example, if you are working on international projects where important work must happen well outside of the traditional 9-to-5 framework. But it is instructive to note that Centerview decided that making the case that round-the-clock work was essential (as opposed to being a workplace norm) was likely to be too risky to attempt in court.
Norms that encourage long working hours can be very hard to change. For example, medical residents are sometimes required to work up to 80 or 100 hours per week, perhaps for months on end. These long working hours are known to create safety risk for patients, but the process of changing these working hour norms has been slow and gradual. Although there may be some educational benefits to the system that keeps residents on call for very long stretches, the long hours associated with residency are sometimes thought of a rite of passage, and these can be surprisingly resistant to change.
It is well understood that long working hours are not good for employees, and it is likely that they are not great for employers either. Once employees get much past 50 hours per week, the quality of the work often declines.
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So why do employers push their employees to work 80, or 100, or 120 hours per week? I think there are two factors at play. First, there is a strong tendency to equate effort with performance, especially when performance is difficult to directly observe or measure. A good manager will understand that one employee who works 40 hours per week might get more done than another who puts in twice as many hours, but good managers are in short supply. Too often, an employee who puts in extra hours will be seen as a good performer when, in fact, they might just be inefficient.
Second, effort often serves as a proxy for dedication. People who set up a business or rise to a top executive position are often genuinely dedicated to their organisation, and they hope and expect that their employees will show similar levels of dedication. Spending so much time at work that your health, marriage, and family are all put at risk is a concrete way of showing this sort of dedication.
Are long hours essential to your job? The answer is often "no". Your employer might prefer that you work longer hours, and might even reward you for that, but your employer cannot compel you to work extremely long hours under most employment contracts. Even if they can compel ridiculous hours, the data often suggest that they shouldn't. If an employer expects you to work 80 to 100 hours a week, you should probably ask what is wrong with the executives that are driving this wrongheaded policy instead of asking if you can get a job there.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
