Employees could miss out on £4,785 a year from extra hours working from home
More than half of UK workers say they are putting in extra hours at home meaning they could be missing out on more than £4,700 ($6,376) a year.
According to a survey carried out by Furniture at Work, 52% of people admitted to doing more hours than expected of them, with 47% saying they start earlier each morning and 49% saying they are working late more often.
When it came to working extra hours, 3-in-10 (30%) people said that they work an extra 3-4 hours a week when working from home, with nearly half (45%) saying they do over 5 hours extra. Only 1% of those who do extra said they do less than 1 hour.
The data, which surveyed 2,000 office workers, through Opinion Matters, who worked from home throughout the pandemic, also found that employees who do overtime were working an average of 5 hours and 54 minutes more every week. This equated to an extra 40.9 days across a whole year of work.
Based on the 2019 average weekly wage in the UK of £585, taken from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), this means some employees could be providing free labour and missing out on £4,785.30 a year, Furniture at Work said.
In contrast, one in four (25%) respondents said they do less hours when working from home. Of those 25%, nearly four in 10 (39%) admitted to doing 5+ hours less work during their week when compared to their working hours when office-based.
Respondents also highlighted several positives to working from home, with some 78% saying favouring the lack of a daily commute and 70% saying they’ve saved money.
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A spokesperson for Furniture at Work said: “When offices were forced to close in March, many of us couldn’t imagine it lasting this long and it seems it’s had some long-term effects on our work-life balance. The fact that almost half of those remote working in the UK are doing five or more hours extra week is a shocking statistic.
“Perhaps saving money and not spending hours on a commute has helped to negate this fact, however, with 56% actually saying they feel their work-life balance has improved. All this means that maybe employees have more to do to ensure their staff are using their newfound time more wisely and not over-exerting themselves with work.”
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