Many of the workplaces visited in the course of the National Conversation do not operate within a Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm “norm”. Hours and days of work vary considerably across the labour market. “Non-standard” working hours include: shift work, seasonal work, casual and precarious work, and fluctuating work demands for self-employed and business owners.
Non-standard working hours present a number of challenges to workers and their families. Services that employees require to sustain employment such as child-care facilities are usually open standard hours. Miners on the West Coast told us that relationships can be difficult to sustain when working hours do not synchronise and little time is available for shared activities. One mine worker said, “My partner and I both work shifts, we get a weekend off together once every five to six weeks.”
Long work hours, sometimes with travelling time on top, are chronic in some organisations and some sectors. Some of those working extra long hours do so out of loyalty, because they need the money and because it is an industry expectation. However, workers spoke of the negative effects on sleeping patterns, family relationships and social activity. Women lawyers told us that “part-time work in law is eight hours a day”, and that women lawyers were going into their own businesses as ‘barristers sole’ or into small practices to get the flexibility they need to combine parenthood and a legal career.
On the other hand, some employers considered long work hours to be part of everyday business and expected employees to work to the demands of the job. A manager working at Port Taranaki told us: “We expect our staff to man up for peak times and to work reasonable over-time”.
Work practices to minimise the harm of chronic fatigue vary considerably. Barriers to implementing safer shift patterns include cost of recovery time, the cost of running more than two work crews, costs associated with covering absences, costs of transport to the worksite and the desire of employees to maximise take-home pay.
Migrant workers employed in sectors such as viticulture, dairying and horticulture, including those employed under the Recognised Employers Scheme, experienced a wide range of working conditions. Groups of workers in South Canterbury, Southland and in Marlborough told us about employment practices that included very long working hours with infrequent days off, inadequate accommodation, as well as problems with pay.
Long working hours were said to be a common problem on dairy farms in the South Island where we heard of the following working patterns: 11 days on, 3 days off; 6 days on, 1 day off; 6 days on, 2 days off, and 29 days on, 2 days off. The hours worked over those shift patterns was not made explicit to many of the migrant workers we spoke to. This merits further investigation to ensure compliance with minimum wage and other employment legislation.
Parents also face long work hours and have to juggle family demands and employment. A group of Auckland human resource professionals made the following comments:
Active health and safety programmes are highly valued in workplaces with a commitment to eliminating and reducing harm at work.
During the course of the project, the issue of health and safety aspects of shift patterns was raised on the West Coast, Northland and in Southland. The health and safety risks inherent in disturbed sleep patterns are well documented. Shift workers, especially those working “graveyard shifts”, have a higher than normal risk of accidents because of fatigue due to sleep disturbance. Relationships are also put at risk.
Both employers and employees expressed a preference for flexible working approaches, and while flexible working arrangements are particularly helpful for parents and people with dependent care responsibilities, other groups seek flexible approaches too. Some participants cautioned that limited availability of flexible work patterns (for example, to those with care responsibilities only) can create an unfair burden on colleagues, unless managed to ensure that did not happen.
In one Bay of Plenty workplace an employee observed that the number of available staff constrained flexibility, “if things turn to custard it would be great if you had someone on standby – someone in the cupboard, that would be good but it will never happen,” she said.
Flexible arrangements included variable start and finish times, working from home, compressed hours, and part-time work variations. Part-time work includes shorter hours, or fewer than five days a week, but can include a shorter working year (school term time working or longer holiday breaks).
The increased labour market participation of women has partly driven flexible work legislation. However, more men want flexible work too.
Flexibility is also offered in relation to the place of work. A number of workers are able to work from home for example, and are supplied with the necessary technology to do so.
Some flexible arrangements have been developed in response to the recession and others in response to retaining and attracting staff. A number of workplaces recognise the realities of daily life and offer flexibility so that employees can attend to non-work tasks during the working day. This level of trust is highly valued by staff. While the payoff to employers in terms of productivity and loyalty was acknowledged, this practice was most often underpinned by values, exemplified by manaakitanga (caring).
Maori-owned businesses around the country saw Maori concepts of whanaungatanga (family) and manaakitanga as being crucial in their work environments. In Wellington one business manager told us, “We are a whanau-based company with family values. Staff are treated as part of the extended family.” A worker at the same business said, “I can take time for the whānau whenever it suits, they’re really good about that here”.