I fear that a common misconception continues to linger in certain corporate circles that long hours increase productivity and create value. But the executive warrior culture of doing 13- or 14-hour days is more often damaging for companies, sapping away value by shutting employees off from the real world.
Employees are forced to give up their interests, spend less time with their families and end up intellectually under-stimulated when businesses believe that quantity matters more than quality time.
OECD data from 2015 revealed that employees in Europe’s richest countries by GDP per capita spent the least amount of time in the office. Germany, the continent’s ninth richest nation, worked the fewest hours at 1,371, followed by the Netherlands (sixth at 1,419), Norway (fourth at 1,424) and Denmark (seventh at 1,457).
France and Luxembourg weren’t far behind. Conversely, countries below the Eurozone average often worked longer: in Italy (15th), 1,725 hours, while those in 27th-richest Greece worked a whopping 2,042 hours.
Workaholism not only impacts on health and increases stress, but can also reduce imaginative capacity, meaning that people are less likely to come up with the innovative solutions necessary for progress.
Only by living a full life away from the office can we cultivate the creativity to enrich business. If companies were more respectful of personal time and promoted possibilities for people to prioritize their individual goals, I’m convinced that employees would bring greater creativity, productivity and a more flexible mind set to the office. This is, after all, what every business wants
Ernesto Ciorra, Head of Innovation and Sustainability, Enel
