Work intensification

The Work Foundation, at Lancaster University set out 66  how the right to disconnect legislation works in Ireland:

Ireland

Employees in Ireland were granted the right to disconnect under a new official code of practice, which includes three main clauses;

• The right of an employee to not have to routinely perform work outside their normal working hours.
• The right not to be penalised for refusing to attend to work matters outside of normal working hours.
• The duty to respect another person’s right to disconnect (for example, by not routinely emailing or calling outside normal working hours).

While it will not be an offence to break the code, workers who are asked to regularly work outside agreed hours will be able to refer to it in proceedings before the Labour Court or Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). This new right forms part of the Irish Government’s commitment to create more flexible family-friendly working arrangements, which also includes a consultation on legislating for workers to have the right to request remote working.

The European Parliamentary Research Service set out 67  how the right to disconnect legislation works in France:

France

France introduced a Right to Disconnect law, effective from 01/01/17 – following sector level collective agreements which regulated the right to disconnect. The new Right to Disconnect law requires companies with 50 employees or more to establish a dialogue between employer and employees (via their union representatives) in order to regulate the use of digital tools beyond working hours, to specify employees' rights to switch off, and to ensure these rights are enforced. Furthermore, the right to disconnect must be included in the mandatory annual negotiation process focussing on quality of life at work and gender equality. It only applies to businesses with 50 or more employees. Workers have to be compensated for electronic requests made beyond working hours, just 'as if someone was having work phone conversations outside of normal business hours or reviewing files'.

According to a 2021 Eurofound report, to date, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain have legislation that includes the right to disconnect, and discussions were ongoing in other Member States. 68

Work intensification in the media and entertainment industries. – ‘Pass the Exhausted Parcel’

Theatre sector

Bectu, a sector of Prospect, carried out a survey of people working in all parts of the UK's theatre sector. It received 823 responses (nearly 30 per cent of whom were not Bectu members). The survey asked people working in the sector about the skills shortages that exist in the theatre sector and the impact of these shortages. The results revealed that issues caused by work intensification were a key driver for staff shortages:

• When asked for the reasons people had cited when leaving the industry, the biggest factors were the combination of a poor work-life balance (84.8 per cent) and unsocial hours (74.5 per cent). 
• The other key factor was the levels of stress at work. 67.6 per cent said they were aware that it was given as a reason to leave the industry by people that they knew, and over 77 per cent said that stress levels had increased since the pandemic.
• 94.4 per cent of respondents said that the industry relies upon a “the show must go on” attitude for its resilience, and 89 per cent of respondents agreed that this appeal to their goodwill is used by employers to unfairly pressure workers into doing work that they shouldn’t be asked to do.
• Bectu members in the theatre sector highlight how poor management practices can be a contributory factor to work intensification.

As we’ve outlined above, work intensification is associated with high workload; the intensity of tasks in terms of physical, cognitive, and emotional demands; and no or limited gaps between tasks. Bectu members have reported that working in the theatre sector involves:

• working long hours to get the work done
• very demanding, stressful work
• employers pressuring workers into doing work that is not in their job description
• poor management practices leading to greater workload.

Scripted TV drama and feature film productions sector

Work intensification issues extend into the scripted TV drama and feature films productions sector.

Bectu surveyed workers in this sector, receiving 278 replies. The survey specifically addresses the working-time experiences of people working in scripted TV drama and feature film productions who have work-patterns that are not directly affected by the logistics and constraints of the filming day (tv editors, for example). It refers to these workers’ daily schedules as “workshop hours”.

Four in 10 respondents said they are spending 11 hours or more at work each day. Some departments are also expected to work additional ‘prep-and-wrap’, which can make the working day for large parts of the crew stretch beyond 13 hours.

In the context of where the work happens – because of the different working locations, the industry relies upon a workforce that can often be expected to spend a further two or three hours a day commuting by car – it all adds up to a brutal working schedule that can often go on for months on end without a break.

Respondents reported a wide range of lunch break arrangements. Nearly 80 per cent said their lunch break is supposed to take an hour, but of these nearly half expect to work through some – or all – of it. Only 2 per cent said that they were actively encouraged to take breaks when needed, and only one in five said they were allowed rest breaks they needed in the day. Four in 10 said that they had no breaks in the day apart from lunch.

The impact on workers

Respondents overwhelmingly believe that their productivity levels and the quality of the work they do are damaged by unnecessary long hours working. Similarly, there is an overwhelming belief that these working patterns damage health, wellbeing and the quality of family/personal life.

The statistics below highlight the scale of the work intensification problem and negative impact it is having on workers.

Bectu members reported, in their own words, how work intensification impacted on them. The first example is particularly shocking and demonstrates the serious health and safety issues associated with work intensification.

‘Working my 13th day in a row, I was exhausted, and I made a bad decision that I realised, in a split-second, was going to result in me losing fingers. My hasty evasive action avoided this, only to cause me to drive the scalpel into my leg instead. I've no doubt that I made this mistake because I was tired.’ Bectu member, Props and SFX

‘Draughtspeople tend to work from 8am to 6pm, but there is an expectation that art department assistants, runners and co-ordinators will be there earlier and later, without overtime. Some in management also do lots of emailing at the weekend with onerous lists of tasks that need to be addressed before the Monday.’ Bectu member, Art department

Outsourcing/Freelancing in the media and entertainment sectors

Bectu reports that the outsourcing of work to a largely freelance workforce facilitates greater work intensification. The employer generally doesn’t care about workforce burnout.  A phrase commonly used in the sector is ‘pass the exhausted parcel’. In the media and entertainment industries if workforce burnout has implications for the quality of work then employers are able to hire a new freelancer.

What is Bectu doing to tackle work intensification?

Bectu has demonstrated that collective agreements and negotiations with employers is an effective way of regulation work intensification. There are already sectors of the industry where employers have conceded this point without doing any damage to their own industry. The Bectu/Pact Construction Agreement signed in 2007 has now developed into one that stipulates for a 7.5-hour working day.

In other cases, Bectu members have found ways to create pressure for more humane hours. The union’s current SFX Branch rate card asserts that shorter ‘workshop’ days should be paid at the same rate as longer ‘shooting’ days on the grounds that workshop working is often more intensive, and most employers already honour this norm for this department.

Bectu has responded to feedback from members who are working parents and are not able to work conventional working patterns, in part due to the intense nature of the work that exists on a full-time bases. Bectu has negotiated with employers to adopt flexible working methods to tackle work intensification.

Recently Bectu encouraged an employer to split up a full-time permanent editor role into two part-time job share roles. The project was also supported by a grant from Screen Skills. Two of their editor members were able to take on a job share editor role which helped to relieve the stress and intensification of full-time, intense freelance editor assignments. The role involves five days’ work split between two editors with one day extra day, with the pay provided by Screen skill, which enables the editors to carry out an effective handover. The job-sharing editors have found that they have greatly increased their productivity through shared knowledge, enhanced problem solving and greater creativity. Because of this they are able to work eight-hour working days, compared with 10+ hour working days. The Bectu members point out that this greatly supports working mothers and enables them to carry out roles that would previously be inaccessible to them. On a practical note the editors state that they can now plan to go on holidays, spend time with friends and not feel burnout at the end of a job.

NAHT

NAHT reports that there is a school leadership crisis with unsustainable workloads and other pressures triggering wellbeing issues for headteachers. This is leading to many school leaders leaving the profession entirely.

In 2022, NAHT carried out a survey of over 2000 of its members. The findings revealed that work intensification is causing real problems for school leaders. The government needs to act urgently to prevent the existing recruitment and retention problem from escalating further.

• 70 per cent of respondents to the NAHT survey suggested that a reduction in their workload would improve the attractiveness of school leadership.
• 58 per cent said that greater professional autonomy, independence and agency would improve the attractiveness of school leadership.

Concerns around reducing professional autonomy echo concerns from other teaching unions who have found that greater scrutiny of teaching professionals has led to them feeling that work is more controlled, intense and less enjoyable.

 NAHT highlights a range of factors that have caused work to intensify for school leaders, including some factors which highlight the reduced autonomy/professional agency for leaders.

 Causes of work intensification for school leaders

• The annual contractual limit of 1265 hours / 195 days set out in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions document days does not apply to school leaders, who in reality, typically work the longest hours of all education professionals. The latest available data from the DfE reports that leaders work on average of 55.1 hours a week (Teacher Workforce Survey, 2019) [for teachers the total was 49.5 hours]. Updated data from the Department of Education in the 2022 Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders report is expected this year.  NAHT’s view is that both figures from DfE’s 2019 data under-report hours worked. Long working hours are a key driver of work becoming more intense and all consuming. This long hours culture has serious repercussions for school leaders health and wellbeing. These effects are outlined below.
• School leaders face a great deal of external scrutiny which can be incredibly stressful. School leaders are accountable for pupil outcomes through performance tables published by government, and to Ofsted, the public body, which inspects education providers.  These regular high-stakes inspections place extraordinary burdens on school leaders, particularly in the period leading up to an inspection. Frequent changes in government policy and inspection frameworks mean that leaders are forced to chase moving targets to maintain ‘inspection readiness’, driving unnecessary workload and stress. The inspection experience is incredibly intense, leading to a blunt overarching graded judgement that rarely reflects the nuance of a school’s context and circumstances. School leaders live in fear that a two-day inspection may be career ending.
• The recent white paper, Opportunity for all, set out government’s intention that all schools should become academies by 2030.  NAHT believes that each school and community should choose the school structure that best suits their context and circumstances.  But the prospects of major system change at a time when leaders are supporting pupils learning ‘recovery’ following the pandemic, with only a fraction of the tuition funding recommended by the government’s own advisor, simply adds to already sky-high stress.  
• Leaders are also weighed down by a new ‘expectation’ that schools must be open for 32.5 hours a week.   Most schools already have similar teaching contact time, so this is not about teaching or learning.  Instead, leaders must shoulder the burden of renegotiating lunchtime and support staff contracts on already stretched budgets, and often complex after school transport arrangements, often for the site to be open just a few minutes extra a day.
• Increasing energy costs are placing uneven and inconsistent constraints on school budgets, giving school leaders the unenviable task of deciding which areas of the school budget needs to be cut to pay energy bills. These financial considerations/worries are a cause of stress for school leaders.
• School leaders are on the front line in mitigating the effects of spiralling poverty.  As often the only accessible public service, they support pupils and their families by feeding hungry children, operating food banks and washing clothes.  Hunger also affects pupil achievement, adding a new dimension of pressure and stress for leaders who are accountable for pupils’ outcomes.  
• Over a decade of lack of investment in the nation’s children means that school funding will not return to 2010 levels in real terms until 2024-25.  Lack of capital investment means leaders cope with out of date, often dilapidated school buildings that are costly to maintain.  Unfunded pay uplifts from government means that leaders are expected to meet any increase in pay through existing budgets – often meaning that teaching assistant and support staff roles must be cut to balance the books.  Leaders’ own salaries have been cut by 19 per cent in real terms [against CPI inflation] since 2010.  These pay cuts combined with pressure, workload and high stakes accountability have seen a collapse in leadership aspiration.  53 per cent of assistant and deputy heads said they do not aspire to headship, with a further 23 per cent undecided.
• Staff shortages and the challenges to retain staff cause work intensification for school leaders – around a third of teachers leave the profession in their first five years of service. For many schools this means that specialist staff cannot be sourced – creating more pressure for non-specialist teachers and the fear of accountability for leaders.  School leaders also face challenges trying to recruit and retain teaching assistants and support staff, many of whom find that they can earn more working in a supermarket. This creates difficulties trying to ensure that disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational and medical needs have an adequate number of staff to support their education throughout the day. School leaders are accountable for staffing levels. Trying to juggle a reduced number of staff is highly stressful. 
• Safeguarding is a key responsibility for all school staff, for which leaders are held accountable.  Too often the health, therapeutic and social care support services that pupils need are either not available or accessible.  This means that school leaders spend long hours trying to source and secure the multi-agency support for vulnerable pupils and pupils with special educational needs.  This is a further source of work intensification and stress as leaders do their best to patch up a broken system in order to keep pupils safe.

Impact on members

 The NAHT survey results demonstrate that work intensification can lead to many negative consequences for school leaders. The high percentages of school leaders experiencing these problems is staggering and reflects the urgent need for the government to tackle this problem.

NAHT asked 2047 of its members to describe in a single word their experience of being a leader over the last year. The word cloud above sums up the impact of work intensification on head teachers.

Recruitment and retention

NAHT asked their members what the top five deterrents to those aspiring to school leadership roles are. 87 per cent of respondents said that concerns about personal wellbeing were the primary obstacle to people entering or staying in the profession.

Work intensification is leading to school leaders leaving the state school teaching profession for good.

• 53 per cent of primary and secondary school leaders who left their posts quit teaching in state funded schools
• 64 per cent of primary school headteachers who left their posts quit teaching in state funded schools
• 67 per cent of secondary school headteachers who left their posts quit teaching in state funded schools.

This demonstrates that the government really needs to take action to tackle work intensification - if not the education sector is heading for a real crisis.

NAHT strategies to tackle work intensification

In addition to support from its own specialist advisors, NAHT members can also access a 24 hour, 365 day a year counselling, information and support helpline through Education Support,.  This includes emotional support and counselling, specialist information on work life balance and up to six sessions of telephone counselling to help members deal with any issues that they have including those caused by work intensification such as stress, anxiety, depression etc.  

 NAHT negotiations have resulted in Department for Education funding a school leaders service which can provide six sessions of professional ‘supervision’ online or by telephone, and counselling support.

UCU members and work intensification

UCU published the findings of their national workload survey 69  in June 2022 highlighting the size and intensity of workloads across the sector as well as how and why they are changing.

The findings were shocking and revealed the scale of workload issues caused by work intensification.

The UCU survey revealed that staff in all sectors are working multiple unpaid days every week. Part time staff and some casualised staff are particularly impacted - working well beyond their contracted hours. Staff in Further Education colleges are working an average of 2 unpaid days (49 FTE hours) per week. Staff in Higher Education are working more than 2 unpaid days (50.4 FTE hours) per week. This workload remains unmanageable for the vast majority of staff in all sectors. In all sectors, around 1 in 10 staff reported that their workloads were entirely,unmanageable, a further third said their workloads were unmanageable most of the time.

Workload pace and intensity continues to increase, which is a key factor driving work intensification. In all sectors, around seven in 10 respondents said workload pace & intensity had increased significantly. Work intensification is happening because of: an ever-increasing administrative burden reduction in staff numbers, meaning remaining staff have to pick up the burden and Covid-related changes to teaching and learning.

A recent report from Education Support, Supporting Staff Wellbeing in Higher Education' 70  echoed the experiences of workers in HE. This report outlined some of the consequences of work intensification, for UCU members: 

• Perceptions of the psychosocial safety climate in UK universities (how well they manage psychological health and safety) are typically poor – more so than in studies of other organisations. They found that more than three-quarters of the sample (78%) strongly disagreed or disagreed that the psychological health of employees is considered as important as productivity. This places employees at greater risk of work-related stress and poor mental wellbeing.
• The level of mental wellbeing found among HE employees was considerably lower than population norms. Less than one-third of respondents (29%) achieved scores indicating average wellbeing with more than half (53%) showing signs of probable depression.
• 79% of respondents reported that they need to work very intensively often or always, and over half (52%) experiencing unrealistic time pressures often or always.
• The work-life balance of HE employees remains poor. More than one-third of respondents (36%) indicated that they always, or almost always, neglect their personal needs due to the demands of their work. Nearly three in ten (28%) reported having to miss important personal activities due to the time they spend working always, or almost always. Respondents who reported poorer wellbeing relating to job demands, control, support, relationships and role and performed more tasks they considered unreasonable and unnecessary were at greater risk of mental health problems, burnout and work-life conflict. Long working hours were an additional risk factor for wellbeing and work-life balance.

A previous UCU survey 71  revealed that Black, Asian and minority ethnic women, LGBT+ and disabled staff were all more likely to report higher workloads and resulting stress, possibly reflecting their tendency to take on more pastoral responsibilities.

What is UCU doing? 72

UCU’s campaign involves organising workers, recruiting workload reps and bargaining to tackle work intensification.

Fundamental to a successful workload campaign is the appointment of UCU workload reps. UCU is the first trade union to develop the concept of a workload rep. Workload reps are essentially health and safety reps with a sole focus on workload and work-related stress issues in their workplace department. The role is more manageable in its focus and scope and attracts those who want to tackle workload hazards rather than the full array of H&S issues in a workplace. Workload reps have access to all the statutory functions and time off they need to perform their rep functions, as is enshrined in the Safety Reps and Safety Committee Regs - ‘Brown Book’. Their appointment is underpinned by a set of regulations that give them a number of powerful statutory functions, including conducting workplace inspections, investigations and rights to consultation and information.

The employer legal duty is leverage as employers who fail to abide by H&S legislation in controlling stress hazards will be in breach of their legal duties to protect staff from harm. Employers have a duty to consult, provide information, facilities and assistance.

 A primary objective of the campaign is to secure agreements with the employers to implement the HSE Management Standards approach which requires an organisation wide, preventative approach to tackling the causes of work-related stress.

UCU ensures that workload reps have the necessary support to win improvements for their members. UCU has developed toolkits to help workload reps. These toolkits set out practical steps that reps should take when establishing workload campaign teams, gaining buy-in from senior leaders and undertaking workload surveys, inspections and investigations. It sets out existing law, duties and negotiating tactics that reps can use to tackle workload issues. For example, organisations are required by law to have in place preventative stress risk assessments at organisational level where significant stress hazards are foreseeable or known across their workplaces. The data on excessive workloads, pace and intensity, long working hours has been shared with employers for decades but they are failing to tackle the organisation level drivers of work related stress and failing to undertake robust, systematic risk assessments to protect staff from workload stress hazards. The toolkit sets out how any negotiations that seek to avoid/reduce excessive workloads must be understood as safety related and as such, any measures identified to tackle these stress hazards must be embedded into organisation level stress risk assessment which must follow principles of prevention, be 'suitable and sufficient' and subject to regular review as outlined in the Management Regs (The Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999).

 If the risk assessment/workload controls are not fit for purpose, workload reps are instructed to escalate this as a H&S concern and if necessary to the regulator, HSE.

UCU have developed specific workload rep training and CPD courses for members. Reps are supported to review or establish collective bargaining structures such as workplace Joint Negotiating Committees and Safety Committees and to utilise these forums for collective bargaining around safer workloads.

In the longer term, the objective is to ensure that the branches remain organised around workplace stress hazards and ensure organisations regularly collectively consult with unions and staff and consider the impact of strategic and managerial decision making on workloads. All staff should be consulted about their workloads on an ongoing basis and before any change is implemented which has potential to cause them harm.

 University of East London campaign and HSE intervention

An HSE investigation at University of East London found contraventions of H&S law, specifically a lack of suitable and sufficient risk assessment for work related stress, despite having evidence of the risk of stress related ill-health arising from their work activities.

UEL appealed the enforcement notice so this notice will not be in force unless HSE win their case at ET. The case is due to be heard at ET in July 2023.

A UCU safety rep escalated the concern to HSE after exhausting all internal mechanisms to try to find a resolution

Oldham College

In FE, union pressure at Oldham College has recently resulted in a collective agreement on 'Workload Principles' as part of their 2022/23 pay claim. The principles fall within a safety framework and seek to ensure workloads are safe through organisational level stress risk assessments following HSE guidance to reduce work-related stress . The principles will be further developed through a joint working group to develop and implement the principles to ensure safe and manageable workloads. The UCU branch will continue to run the workload campaign locally, recruiting more workload reps and undertaking safety related activities to ensure ongoing development of a safer and healthier working environment at the college.

Queen Margaret University

In HE, the UCU branch at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh continue to develop the workload campaign approach and have made significant progress due to union pressure. They have appointed of a number of workload safety reps who undertake workload inspections and investigations and regularly consult on workload stressors in various collective bargaining forums and joint working groups that have been established, including a 'stress management working group' and a 'workforce planning working group'. The employer has agreed to run HSE stress indicator surveys every two years, and the findings will continue to inform the organisational stress risk assessment and collective approaches to tackling workload stressors. The UCU branch will continue to work with the employer to identify and tackle the root causes of work-related stress while organising and campaigning for safer workloads as part of the workload campaign.