User:Corbin Apple/sandbox2

Employees who work overtime hours can be effected in the short and long-term. Significant effects include stress, lack of free time, poor work-life balance, and health risks (Poll & CVD links). Employee performance levels could also be lowered. Long work hours could lead to tiredness, fatigue, and lack of attentiveness (police links). As a result of these risks, suggestions have been proposed as to how we can mitigate these risks.

Results of overtime

The effects of overtime hours vary greatly. However, while studies have been done to provide correlation between hours worked and negative effects, other studies have shown to counter these claims.

Short-term effects

Overtime hours have both positive and negative effects on the employee. On the positive side, workers who enjoy working long hours are more satisfied with their work-life. They also tend to have better in-work relationships than those who work less hours. On the other side, the level of satisfaction with work tends to decrease as the numbers of hours worked increases. Consecutive periods of working straight shifts, lack of breaks during the day, and consecutive days of working without a day off lead to lack of efficiency and productivity in workers (police link again?).

Group-on study

Group-on performed a study in July, 2016 on the effects of work. The results found that 38% work too much, 46% never had time to relax, and 60% of pollers have an unhealthy work-life balance (poll link).

Long-term effects

Long-term effects were studied by Dr. Conway (link to her?) and her team. They studied the link between overtime and the increased risk of cardiovascular disorder (CVD) events (link). Their results included evidence that showed that for people who worked at least 10 years for each additional hour worked, starting from the the 46th hour, his or her risk of a CVD event increase by 1% (link to article).

Counter-arguments

Other studies argue that there is no direct cause-and-effect relationship between hours worked and short and long-term risks. Their claims include comments about factors that alter the outcome of effects. These include an individual's personality, occupation, and income (link to HILDA?).

Risk mitigation

While a definitive conclusion could not be made, suggestions have been made to minimize the potential risks of long work hours. The make-up of the work schedule should be managed properly, as to avoid multiple back-to-back shifts, long periods of working straight, balanced breaks during the day (link).

Overtime (Outline)

1. Add to background

• Mention that there are effects to overtime hours
  • Research has been done to discover the truths behind these claims
  • Add "Effects of overtime hours" as a section in the Contents box
    • Add "short-term" and "long-term" as sub-sections
    • "Mitigating the risks of overtime hours" as a sub-section or a new section

2. Switch order of paragraphs

• "Time off in lieu" would be more natural to follow the "Overtime laws by jurisdiction" section, rather than come before it

3. Effects of overtime hours (new section)

• Short-term
  • Include the results of the GroupOn study (with source). Followed-up by discussing the research performed on police officers and how long hours effect their day-to-day abilities. Discuss some common trends found in the HILDA study concerning the positive/negative impacts overtime work has on its employees.
• Long-term
  • Start off by saying how Dr. Conway and her colleagues hypothesized about the physical effects. Discuss their findings and quote the comment about each additional hour worked, starting from the 46th hour, increases the risk of CVD by 1%.
  • Discuss the Folkard and Lomardi study about how the composition of a work week has varying risk. Include how the increased risk for certain compositions would lead to a greater chance of injury or loss productivity and how those effects are exponentially worse the longer they occur.

4. Mitigating the risks

• Discuss all of the methods I researched how ways to mitigate the risk. Tie the methods together to show similar trends in methodology. Include that more research needs to be invested in researching the direct causation/correlation of overtime and risks and that from this, different methods of work-life balance will be introduced.

I think these additions are very important. I am wondering if this would make more sense as its own article, instead of being added to an article that seems to simply define overtime and the laws. The important parts are the effects and how to mitigate it. I feel if you stayed with this article, these additions should be at the end of the existing sections. I know you are not done with the outline so I will check back later! Farley.ty (talk) 17:13, 14 October 2016 (UTC)