Let me introduce Lisa. We all know her, she is in her early 20s, she works at her local fast food restaurant and is studying law at uni. Though she only needs 20 hours to work to
keep her bills paid but her hours are massively inconsistent, she doesn't mind because she always gets called in for extra shifts. However some weeks her manager calls her 3 or 4 times a day to fill shifts, she doesn't have the time to work because she has exams, other life commitments, but she often says yes because the manager sounds desperate and threatens to cut her hours if she doesn’t say yes. She ends up working too many hours in quick succession and feels completely burnt out. This is the reality of shift work in Australia.
Employee downtime is critical to the overall productivity. Everyone knows or is someone who gains self worth from working lots of hours. When you are a shift worker this can become increasingly problematic. You may already be busy but the allure of extra money or the anxiety of letting someone down causes you to agree to work. Employees need to be able to say no to shifts and managers need to be cool with this and not add additional pressure.
Overworked employees are less productive. A recent study by Stanford https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunchmode/econ-hours-productivity.html in the US has shown that there is a direct correlation between amount of hours worked and the productivity an employee may have. This study essential shows that once an employee works over 40 hours a week their productivity slips until working 60 hours they are working at a third of their potential productivity.
Take Lisa from our previous example if she ends up working 40 hours after filling shifts, with her large uni workload. Something is going to give and either the current job or study is going to suffer, all because the manager calls Lisa because they know she will say yes. We need to understand that work is not everyone's number one commitment and allow staff the space to live their lives.
This is one of the many reasons we created Yodel. Our Co-Founders saw day in and day
out staff stressed out of their minds trying to juggle their complicated lives. Using Yodel if an Employee can work they simply click on the shift or if they can’t they can do it guilt free by ignoring the notification and getting on with their busy lives. To find out more
contact us at yodelit.co
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