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Work-home balance under threat
By Nick Easen for CNN
(CNN) -- As long hours and stress gain ground in the workplace, employees are increasingly struggling to balance office and home life. And as concern mounts, workers are looking to a more flexible routine, rather than the rigid nine-to-five, five-day office week. With a steep rise in work hours over recent years, many people believe that company policy is stopping them from achieving a better balance in life. "I think there is tremendous stress, everybody is really craving a bit of flexibility. The chance to be a human being rather than just a drone," Allison Pearson, a columnist on the Evening Standard newspaper in London, told CNN. On both sides of the Atlantic -- from Canada to England -- concern is mounting over the costs of the work-life conflict. Last month's MORI market research poll of 1,000 workers in the UK concluded that more than half wanted to be able to control the hours they spent working, with three quarters saying they wanted a four-day working week. "Workers whose employers are forward thinking enough to allow them to work flexibly will be more content in their jobs, more productive and have happier families," Frances O'Grady, deputy general-secretary of the Trade Union Congress, said in a statement. Another survey by the UK's Department of Trade and Industry showed recently that seven out of ten highly stressed workers do not have access to any formal flexible working practices. Cost of work stressThe cost of stress in the office is also becoming a burden. In Canada, more than 20 percent of all workers' compensation benefits paid -- which amounts to $1 billion annually -- is related to workplace stress, says the Labor Program of Human Resources Development. According to the UK's Health and Safety Executive, 500,000 people in the country experience work-related stress at levels that make them ill and at a cost to society of at least £3.7 billion ($6.3 billion) every year. Governments are now getting in on the act, trying to address the extent to which this problem occurs in the workplace. The UK has already piloted a set of management standards known as the "stress code," which will hopefully go some way to deal with the problems. This will evaluate the amount and type of stress employees experience in their organization and then develop and implement solutions. It sets out a mutually agreed sets of standards relating to employee control of the workload, support by management for that work, relationships and avoiding conflict in the work place, roles of employees and managers, and engagement of employees in any change in the company.
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