Work-Life balance: Do you know what? I am jealous of his Blackberry…

In the course of my day job I get to hear a lot of things about the economy and how we all make a living or not as the case maybe but this piece of research from an office broking firm really brought home to me just how hard everyone is working just to keep still financially and I suspect companies are taking full advantage of our fears.

The report says that Britain’s office workers are spending more hours than ever at work with one in ten having SLEPT overnight at their desks during the past year.

That is seriously worrying and it only gets worse. According to officebroker.com nearly two thirds of office workers start work before their official working hours and regularly work through lunch, with 56% admitting to frequently leaving the office later than agreed.

In addition to the 10% of workers who admitted to having slept in the office, more than a third of workers admitted to having left the office after 8pm with a further 10% stating they called it a day between midnight and 3am during the last year.

And for many workers leaving the office didn’t signal the end of the working day with 45% of those polled stating they regularly took work home to complete in the evenings which they haven’t found time to look at during ‘normal’ working hours.

The survey also revealed that staff were not being fairly rewarded for taking on extra duties, with 58% stating that their pay had stayed the same or decreased in the last year.

Many firms are relying on their staff to do unpaid overtime, with 14% of those polled admitting to working more than 50 hours per week with one in eight workers spending between six to ten additional hours a week in the office when compared to two years ago.

I know my man is working harder than ever he is SO exhausted that the things he used to be able to do he cannot, such as our vegetable patch. The one thing I have been going on and on about for the last decade because it was too big, too time consuming and just, well, let’s say he grew things because he could, rather than things his family actually liked to eat and well, you get the picture. At one stage our veggie patch was a fifth of an acre!

Problem was he loved his veggie patch and in the face of that I well I did the weeding. In fact he used to do a lot of things such as playing golf, going out, heck we had a weekend as a family and now? Now, he’s too tired and the weekend seems to be a napping space so he can be raring to go for the week ahead at work.

Somehow in all of this I have to find time for family, for all of us, so that my children don’t forget what their father looks like. For the first time my boys and I will be holidaying on our own in Wales. It will be great fun but although Dear Charlie has promised he will come down for two long weekends I have no doubt that either these will be cancelled or else he’ll bring his work with him just like he did at half term and land up on his bloody Blackberry all hours of the day and night.

Somehow I don’t think this is particularly healthy and I worry, worry like mad that the toll could be too great. I mean my man is nearly 50, he works too long and doesn’t have enough time to recover and work like some persistent harpy just won’t leave him alone!