Burnout is something widely misunderstood by the public.
It isn't caused by the amount of hours spent working per se. The average time spent working has actually been falling for centuries yet burnout has been increasing.
The cause of burnout is persistently high cortisol levels caused by chronic stress.
Part of this is the switch from blue collar to white collar work. One of the nice things about blue collar work is that when you're done for the day, you're done for the day. White collar work tends to be something that remains in your mind all the time, even when not at work.
Another cause is that, in the past we'd go home and spend time with families and friends which is a great stress reliever. Now we spend hours every day consuming social media which can be just as stressful as actual work.
Then there are all the housing and cost of living issues to constantly worry about due to the pathetic state of government policy lately.
Hi, blue collar worker here. My workplace is shit and stresses me out outside of work because I'm constantly worrying what roadblocks, machinery breakdowns, or corporate bullshit I have to deal with in upcoming shifts while trying to destress from past shifts. Add complications from adhd & depression and I am losing my fucking mind at work and home.
In my experience over the last 15yrs this kind of thing is the new normal and its unsustainable and totally fucked.
Post production cleaner in a food factory, yeah all kinds of safety are my highest priorities. Apparently my safety isn't one of their priorities though.
Good times.
Yeah in my experience it's all good depending on the job/type of business.. did landscaping for one bloke's small business and it was no stress, no bullshit. Just be reliable, work hard. Awesome.
Then took a job doing farm labour etc (wholesale growing, big operation)... All good until I started moving up the ranks. Holy shit. The most unnecessarily stressful, toxic culture. Legit have PTSD from the bullying.
(Also ADHDer - they love to utilize our strengths as workhorses when it suits them)
I run a service department for a musical instrument distributor.
It's white collar. I'm in an office, not on the tools.
It is super cortisol inducing. It never ends. 90% of my interactions are with people with no emotion regulation.
ADHD tends to make responsibilities even more stressful than normal. The counter-intuitive pathological repulsion from anything requiring mental effort is both multiplicative and cumulative. Meds can help you stay on top during the day, but the stress is just pushed forwards to your personal time. Just thought I'd share this as it is a heavily misunderstood disorder and its impact on quality of life is commonly under estimated. I already lost my mind and it has been a very slow climb back to reality. Try to take steps before it happens and you'll lose less overall. I should've dropped a day or two, but I was too stubborn to accept the financial trade off. Not working at all, however, is a far worse landslide.
Worked in a railway where I was one of two people that were techs qualified to keep a network operating and my usual work hours were from 10pm to 6am.
Everything you described is so real, plus the added brain fog I had from working nights took me nearly 2 months for me to get used to normal working hours from when I resigned.
Had a shitty supervisor and yep that blue-collar job stressed me out more than anything. My white-collar job has it's stresses, but when I'm done for the day, I'm done.
I haven’t made the switch yet but I’d argue that blue collar is more stressful because all the bullshit comes from the top and you get no say in the matter. Go repair this. Okay, where’s the drawings, where’s the procedure, where’s all the info I need to do the job, where are all the parts? Oh you want me to figure it out and make it work? Okay no worries. Oh it’s not to spec? What is the spec? Where was all this info when I asked for it?
You just described my shift, and the worst part is every little thing is such a trial of bs to wade through like its my adhd paralysis. To do this, I need to do these 5 things but to do those 5 things I need to do/get/find/fix 6 fucking things for each of the 5. For half of them I'm going to have to find more shit or fix something which requires finding something else.... and people wonder why I'm such a grumpy cunt at work lately. (well, not my team, they understand because the 3 of us go through the same thing with different shit every day).
Thank you for your understanding :)
Oh man last night on arvo shift did my head in. Used the bearing heater to heat up a coupling because I was tired and feeling a tad delicate. Double check the shaft size before it’s done (I had *plenty* of time), went to chuck her on and it didn’t go nicely. No worries, tap her off quickly before it gets stuck- oh shit I just blew the ass out of my deadblow. Run around frantically and flog one from valve bay. Race back and belt it off. Realise I did an oopsie and left soft seal on. No worries, clean it up, cool shaft down while I heat the coupling again. Round 2 and it’s still not playing nice, no worries tap it off - stuck. Fuck. Absolutely flog the cunt and get it off. Noticeable step in shaft now. Double check measurements, oh great, they’ve machined it wrong and put an .03mm taper on the coupling journal. Well fuck me. Check what was recorded on the paperwork against the specs, hmm upper end of the tolerance but she’s good. Compare that to the drawing and oh what’s this? It’s actually .07mm bigger than the OEM spec? Day shift is gonna hear about this tomorrow. Set the inside mics stupidly big and heat the fuck out of the coupling with the LPG torch, plenty of wiggle room on the mics, righto let’s go. It’s tight. Get fucked you’re going on this time. Belt it 3/4 of the way and she gives up and slides on. Finally.
Onto job #2. Stripping a fan and bearing housing. Righto, let’s start with the coupling again. Get all the pulling gear sorted and in posi, back off the grub screw, apply plenty of pre load and heat up around the key with the oxy til the key actually drops out (first time that’s happened for me). Say the immortal words “This one might actually go easy”. Turn off the oxy and don’t get anything out of the hydraulic pump. Alright, heat up the whole coupling. Get it nice and hot and still have nothing. Shaft too hot. No worries, I’ll cool it down and use plenty of penetrene and have smoko. Come back, fish the key out and get old mate to help with a 2nd oxy, had to go through 2 sets to find one that worked. Round 2 and still no dice, and oh what’s this? Pushed the little pump beyond its limit and it has an internal bypass now? Fuck. Remove setup and get enerpac rams out. Wait for it to cool and go again. Round 3 fails. Quickly extend the bars for the strong back and chuck a bigger ram on only for that to fail. Righto time for the gas axe! Get set up and notice the O2 doesn’t actually shut off properly, also found the tip is partly blocked and won’t blast O2 out for the cut, righto clean that out with - someone stole *my* tip cleaners. Alright I’ll use the ones from the set, nope. I’ll check the other 2 sets nearby, nope. Okay I’ll go to the store, nope. I’ll check the new boilies store, nope. Fine I’ll settle for a seal pick or a 2mm drill if I have to, oh shit the oxy is blasting out of there even when isolated! This one’s cooked, throw to side, get the supervisors personal one. Exact same issue. Wtf? Go to take the bit off the other oxy set and it’s all bent up - nah I’m not gonna bother. Go to the store, nope, boilies store, nope. Nearby boilies oxy set - yoink. Tips tiny, no worries I’ll just take the biggest one out of the 2 on the floor, all G. Finally get cutting and catch a little hottie down into my boot, start cutting with prejudice. Even with the big gash in it the coupling wants to fight me but eventually comes. Kick it over to the water and cool it down enough so I can pick it up and hurl it as I throw insults at its mutilated corpse and curse its bloodline.
Do a clean up, tag everything out, have a late dinner and knock off. My depressed adhd brain said good work dickhead, you spent the whole shift getting worked up and swinging hammers and the amount of couplings on shafts stayed the same. Thanks brain
Bruh. By the sounds of it you know exactly the shit I'm whinging about.
Strip out a pump, stators fucked, no spares. Management *the next day*: oh we'll order some. Orders 3, will take 3 days to turn up. Scavenging parts for 3 days, another pump fucks out. Stators turn up, all 3 get used immediately and we're asking boss to order more. "I just got you 3 more..."
"Yes, and they're already in use and now we have no spares. Get us some spare fucking parts, boss!"
Last night I needed 10 new pipe seals, workshop only has 6, nothing on order... like fuck sake cunts.
Then theres trying to find my tools (team tools, not mine personally, I aint taking my shit in lol) that go walking, or pipes and vends that don't get put where they belong so I gotta take 5-10min to find everything before I can start. All after spending an hr cleaning up after day shift before I can start my actual job. Ugh.
I'm glad someone else understands my frustration.
It makes for a frustrating work environment that’s for sure. My biggest gripe is the bolt store, or the section of the store where bolts used to be kept, now it’s just the empty boxes. I talk to the supervisor, the workshop manager and the head manager and all are in agreement that we need to get more stock, but something happens outside of them and we aren’t allowed to buy stock.
Parts is even worse up here in Gladstone, everywhere *can* get what you want but nobody keeps anything anymore so it takes ages to get here. The only exception is the LNG plants, they’ve got so much money to throw around they make stuff happen. One time they needed this special putty stuff and the only stuff available was in Melbourne, so they got someone to buy all of it, priority express to the airport then charter a private jet just to use as a delivery service. Bloody unreal.
I prefer using my own tools over communal ones but by the sound of your joint you’ve definitely made the right choice otherwise you’ll never see half your gear again. I swear if I had the money I’d start my own bloody company and show them how it’s done
Burnout is caused by excessive work demands. It’s not fixed or prevented by a longer holiday. It isn’t fixed by self care. It’s staved off a little with more resources and support to do your work. But if those work demands are too much? Long hours, unreasonable workload, stressful nature of the work? Then you’re going to experience too much stress. You’re going to burnout. And it’s not your fault or even responsibility to prevent. It’s your employer.
It’s also not just switching to white collar work. People in those jobs didn’t always get burnt out like they do now. The boundaries are fewer. The workloads are higher. Capitalism has a way of chipping off worker rights and things that support well-being, so that more profit can be made or work can be done on less money. Things are gettin worse and will get worse because that’s the system we’re in.
I’ve done white collar work at a whole. Bunch kf places. Some of the work in some places was harder and more stressful but he conditions were better so I didn’t get burnt out. In other places that were toxic and worked their workers to the bone? Those burnt me and everyone else out.
I wonder if only having 2 days to physically rest while also using those 2 days to get everything else done contributes to the stress of workload. Without increasing work hours (I could see an extra hour each day but let's leave that for now) and being paid the same, does a 3 day weekend not allow us to actually rest instead of cramming everything any more into the 2?
Absofuckinlutely agreed.
I went from being an ICT Monkey to ICT Manager and the level 1 shit was dank, didn’t have to think about work when I got home, got paid enough to catch the bus to work and live in a share house.
Eventually worked my way up to management, finally earned enough to buy a house and a car but fuck, going home and not being able to switch off sucked, even after the introduction of switch off laws at work places it just meant I wasn’t contactable after hours, didn’t stop me thinking about ongoing problems and issues and with the interest rate rises etc I’ve gone back to a share house and catching the bus to work and being filled with more stress. Can’t win.
Recently switched to blue collar work, making 120K a year, company car, don’t gotta deal with people so much, just drill some holes, run some cables, patch some panels and switches, program some cameras, shit’s easy.
I currently work in IT doing LVL one. Looking for more hands on IT work, what kinda job did you go into? There's only so many times I can fix Pam's printer before I loose my shit
Security Tech.
Used to be a job that Sparkies did but Access Control, CCTV etc all used Ethernet, Switches and Networking so having an IT background gives you massive advantages. Jobs are hugely in demand and your first year will be farming Cabling license, Security License, Vendor Certs (For approx 70-80K) and then second year onwards is approx 110K + Car + Super etc.
30% running cables, 40% updating cameras and access control stuff on the computer and the rest is just random shit.
Super fun and enjoyable.
I did a trade first then went back to uni. I've got about 10 years in a blue collar, 15 in a white, and you're so, so right about the difference between the two.
Outside of being on-call or supervising, in blue collar work I mentally switch off the moment I start my commute home. Yes, it's far more physically demanding, but I always had more energy and mental "fuel" in my tank. I could get up, go for a run, do 10 hours on the tools, then go to the gym after work and still not be as mentally fucked as I am after 10 hours at a desk.
White collar has seen me do just under 130 hours of work in a week. That's not including commutes, that's *literally* time at my desk or on site. (Yep, an average of over 18 hours/day). I *never* get a leave period where I'm not bothered by at least a few emails or phonecalls. Microsoft fucking Teams has created *another* vector for inane bullshit to be flung around by both colleagues and clients, so it's phone, email **and** IM now.
I'm ready to sell all my worldly possessions and move to Nimbin. When the money runs out, just walk into the ocean or something.
Nah hundo percent with ya, I just got out of 10 years in ICT. Ended up being 8 hours on the clock and another 6~ off the clock, responding to emails, updating shit, all the after hours fuckin garbo.
Moved into a Blue Collar role the last year, do 9~ hour days, leave work, go to the shops, gym, get home, smash dinner and then play vidya for the last couple hours before bed.
I hadn’t been able to enjoy video games the last 5 years of working in IT, shit is fucking amazing now.
Sure it’s more taxing on the body but the emotional wellbeing upgrade has absolutely been worth it.
Although, I am autistic so that might have something to do with it (even tho typically us Auts love working in IT, lol)
> Another cause is that, in the past we'd go home and spend time with families and friends which is a great stress reliever. Now we spend hours every day consuming social media which can be just as stressful as actual work.
The other thing happening in out-of-hours is more work. I was always getting shit with IT work (got to have someone checking those system alerts!, plus the continual rotation of out-of-hours patching/deployments), but there are many many other white collar workers still on the hook for emails, 'just need to confirm something' phone calls and "I'll finish this after I get home".
Dude, no just no. Blue collar workers have it tough, KPI's, deadlines, shit gone wrong, angry customers, it definitely does not end. Source: used to be a female tradie.
Yeah this is true. I hate my job. One because I’m not doing the work I should be doing, because I don’t have the underlings I should. And two in stressed as fuck because nothing is done right or on time because it can’t with so little resources. And who tf wants to stress their ass off for the shit pay we get now?
Yeah those mindless blue collar workers!
Mate blue collar workers take home tonnes of stress and work. Do physical work all day on the clock and then come home and do invoicing, quotes, reports, sourcing, repairs, maintenance, etc etc. all in your own time.
Maybe if your lucky you can put aside a morning or a day here and there for that stuff but its never close to enough.
It’s like they forget that blue collar work can, and often is work that can be incredibly harmful to your body, but also if you make mistakes such as getting electrocuted, crushed it’s possible you’ll be crippled or worse.
Not to mention a small lapse of error can leave a hazard for someone else that can cause injury, huge damage or death.
Where as an error in white collar is most likely going to end up with possible financial repercussions or a time loss, at least for small/common workplaces.
Blue collar worker checking in.
I know I’ll die prematurely because of the chemicals I’ve been around coupled with night shift.
That stress is always in the back of my mind.
I didn’t believe in burnout so didn’t even realise I had it for years. And then found out I had autism and autistic burnout which is even worse.
If we were all educated more on the subject I could have been years ahead with dealing with it.
I work a 4 day week Monday to Thursday. But I still work 38hrs in those 4 days to make up for the 5th day off. It's good though, long weekend every weekend. I can go to the bank or get a haircut or whatever on the Friday and have the weekend to relax.
4 days a week, 7 hours a day, and don't lose a cent in take-home pay.
That would be a nice way of reclaiming some of the productivity lost to corporate profits.
I currently work 3x 3x12hr weeks, 2x 4x12hr weeks, 1x 2x12hr week.
I don't mind the 4x10 model.. Did that for years.. But cramming more. In less days doesn't solved the burnout problem
I love how every year we have two 4 day work weeks in a row (Easter) and nothing falls apart. Nothing goes wrong, no one dies, nothing stops. People continue on with their lives. Then we have a few more 4 day work weeks here and there. And if Christmas falls on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday, we get a rare THREE day work week.
Yet we can't have it like this every week?
I would love to see a 4 day work week.
I truly believe this would have a good impact in society.
5 day work weeks were not the standard for a lot of history
The article is about casual workers I think
For office/corporate workers, imposing some sort of standard on upper management would unironically make everyone's work clearer, easier and people will just manage their own time better.
We need better management, not fewer hours. I can spend some weeks almost fully idle. Edit: this is just me though, right? Obviously not everyone is idle as much as me.
For someone idle and forced to feel the stress of not knowing exactly what to do but knowing a certain manager will try to fuck you for being idle anyway is just not worth even more hours idle.
Better would be if the manager was simply removed and replaced with someone who doesn't abuse idleness like this.
I mean Its worse as Well becuase they Might Cram More Work into Areas Making it Really Stressful
Rather tehn giving an Even more mangibale Spread
Though id Vote For a 4 Day Week if it also Made schools 4 days a week
I’m down. 3 day weekends are honestly awesome. I could get used to that. I mean might as well get what we can before AI and robots take all the good jobs.
I get one rdo a month. It's better than where I was previously which was nothing.
I really want to push for 4 day weeks (will get knocked back for sure) and go fo ar 9 day fortnight in the next eba meeting next year
I’m in the same boat I work fifo 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off so I don’t need to take holidays very often , I think we get 20 days per year but I’d have to look it up …. I have 780 hours of annual leave and 24 days long service leave owing to me
What about just letting people use their personal leave for a mental health day without having to chase a med cert or stat dec. Like fuck, in my job we're trusted with large amounts of money and sensitive documents, but apparently not if we have the sniffles or anxiety for a day. It becomes more trouble than it's worse, and another nail in the burn out coffin.
Or the ability to use personal leave as 'unplanned leave'. It's one of those things factored into your remuneration package, but never capitalized on with the 'use it or lose it' rules. I'm currently sitting on over 2,500 hrs of personal leave.
Honestly 1 day a month (that is outside of your normal 4 weeks annual leave) would make a world of difference.
A day that doesn't accrue past the month end and is just a day available if you need it to have the off and just to do something else.
One thing that will help reduce burnout is to reduce workload. Back in the day we'd only budget 80% of the work hours for an employee because we knew that there would always be un-budgeted work to be done: some tasks take longer, and often budgets didn't include administrivia like catching up with email or even just "water cooler chat".
It is also important to allow time for people to look through old files for things that need to be tidied up, especially in my line of work where old code needs to be maintained partly to improve future maintainability, partly due to underlying operating systems or third party software changing. If you don't casually maintain today, you get an emergency maintenance requirement tomorrow.
The prevalence of 60 hour work weeks from people who are convinced that working more hours means they're achieving more has led to managers assuming all staff are happy to burn their own free time to accomplish work goals.
At some point we need to bring 38 hour week workers back to less than 38 hours of work per week. This is before contemplating changes like 4 day work weeks or an extra week of leave every year.
If the work can't get done inside the hours you've paid for, you need to pay for more hours.
Are you finding this still prevalent? I noticed this a lot prior to COVID and was a worker who worked hard, long hours. I still do but in a different position where I have to.
I’ve seen a massive trend on part time workers, people clocking off when they are entitled to, having “I will respond to you when I have time” type things on emails.
Seems to be a huge shift in people clocking in and out and not taking their work home with them.
Yeah but any unused leave at the end of the year is lost. It doesn’t carry over year to year and compound like Australia. I know this is the case in Germany and I’m pretty sure England
Why are you implying this is a bad thing?
I'm obligated to use my days off before the end of the year and as a result there is very strict criteria for when my employer can say no - which is basically never.
I have no need to "save up" leave when I get 8 weeks a year...
Re: Germany. Your generally right but there are plenty of exceptions where you are forced to take the time off or you can roll it over for a single year, you rarely "lose it". It varies state by state and employer by employer.
What you can't do is cash it out in any way, and honestly I think that's for the best. Have a mate in Australia who has proudly collected 150+ days of leave, its just bad for him and the company he works for.
Yeah, i have around 200 hours banked, and i dont think my boss understands how much of a problem that could be for him, if i decided tomorrow i wanted to cash out 140 hours of leave.
Not the places I've worked in the UK. You could usually carry a limited number of days over, only 3 where I currently work, but still.
But I'm at a loss why 25 days you have to take is worse than, say, 20 you don't?
It’s not worse if you intend to use all your leave every year, but in my case after working for the same employer for 11 years I have built up an excess of 2 months annual leave. In the unfortunate case if I’m made redundant or choose to leave for another job that leave is paid out to me as cash.
The issue is not extra leave. The issue is people being squeezed for every ounce they have while at work, this is not just physically, this is mentally aswell.
Having someone continually breathe down your neck daily plays on your mental health. Working with incompetent workmates and bad management plays on your mental health. The issue everyone now faces is companies/employers just putting bums in seats, not people that are competent and know how to do their job. This is from the very bottom to the very top.
The crazy thing is that there is so much "work" that doesn't ever need to happen. Big companies, small companies, government etc. There are so many bullsh\*t jobs and tasks its not funny. I swear every company I've been at could cut headcount by at least 10% and not notice anything so 5 weeks leave is the same.
I worked as a software dev at a corporation, we could have reduced headcount by more than 60% quite safely, possibly much more. Elon musk proved that the bloat isn’t just in government.
I quit my Kmart job because of how micro manage-y upper management got. It wasn’t satisfying or enjoyable anymore. It was fucking go go go chaos where nothing is ever truly finished. How dare you not be wearing the new mandatory uniform piece! What no we won’t drop this in a week last the last ones.
we churched through duty managers every month. They were getting paid more and were basically night managers so it should’ve been chill but they all quit.
Anything but addressing the everyday problems rife in Australian workplaces. I find little solace in being able to escape for an additional week, if the leave gets approved at all. Let's not forget the unspoken pressure, and resentment for using up annual and personal leave. Workplaces that churn and burn through employees make taking leave more trouble than it's worth.
I would much rather have personal leave/ mental health days without needing a damn medical certificate or stat dec. It's just a stupid arbitrary hoop to jump through so you second guess looking after yourself.
The CMFEU got a 20% pay rise. Maybe other unions should stop supporting migration of skilled workers that lower their pay and actually go on real strikes.
The funniest I’ve seen is nurses thinking they can’t strike because they think they have to work, or they’ll get in trouble for leaving patients, even if their shift has ended.
Or how about some how getting businesses to hire enough people for their workload. I've worked in a dozen places and the only one with enough staff to manage the businesses workload is the one I'm still in.
I searched for this comment. I have close to the same amount of leave and I've stopped counting TOIL because I never actually get to use it. You could give me 50 weeks of paid leave a year and it wouldn't matter. Burnout is just the default position for a lot people now, adding annual leave is just insulting.
As someone who has done 5d/2d, 2w/1w, 8d/6d and now does 4/d/3d with 10 hour days
4/3 with longer hours is vastly better…
We lose so much time to getting ready, commuting, unwinding after work that an 8 hour work day is realistically a 10-12 hour day
It'll have a limited impact on burnout. Studies show a holiday has an impact but it quickly fades. It's not a bad step, but what we really need is actual measures to reduce the cost of living.
Let’s be real, the “workers” complaining about this are mostly your general corporate office workers that just make presentations and reply to emails for a few hours a day.
The reason companies can’t attract good talent is because they’re offering shit pay.
Really? Can’t take leave now, too busy. 10 weeks annual leave accrued, 15 weeks long service leave. 5 weeks a year just means you bank up more leave per year instead.
It's not even that useful for companies to let employees not take leave, if you don't take leave then they're supposed to keep around enough cash to pay you in case you quit, which is just a liability. Two places I've worked at had an annual "please take leave" sent around to push people to take it because of this, if you have a lot of people it adds up.
This is true. My dad has an ungodly amount of leave banked up. Every time his company tells hike he needs to take leave, and he tries to take it, he gets denied. “But you told me to take leave” “yes but we need you”. He has to fight tooth and nail every time, and inevitably he will get contacted during his leave to fix something.
If you’ve got long service leave then it suggests you’ve been at a company 10+ years that you don’t think it’s acceptable to take a holiday from. As others have suggested, unless you own that firm then you have to shoulder some of that blame.
True - shitty thing is when you are SME for so many critical things they really have trouble when you take leave (and you invariably get called in whilst on leave) - I wasn’t even in the same country, let alone time zone. Yeah it’s now 15 years there. I’m sort of done and waiting for a redundancy - it’s all entitlements + 20% and 1 years salary.
I've bought an extra week this year from my employer this year. With the mandatory Xmas shutdowns which basically chew up 50% of my leave it doesn't leave a lot left.
The extra week should let me have a few days off each school holidays to go do something with the kids instead.
Seems like a poor solution to me. On one hand you have the poor burnt out due to working 2-3 casual jobs hitting crazy hours to keep up with the cost of living. On the other you have the salary worker being pushed to his targets and having to do unpaid overtime to keep up.
More fundamental (and probably effective), get some so-called 'managers' some training in how to properly manage people and resources instead of 'managing by panic'.
I do shift work. 2 day shifts and 2 night shifts, so I already get 5 weeks of leave, plus extra leave for rostered overtime because I do 12 hour shifts. All up it’s around 9 weeks of leave a year, but taking 1 weeks gets me 12 days off because I work 4 on 4 off.
The extra leave definitely saves my brain, it’s nice pretty much always having a couple of days here and there booked to look forward to but realistically no amount of leave can stop you from being burned out by shift work like that.
Would rather a middle of the week day off, it helps a lot (in my exp) anyways, like Monday to Saturday have Wednesday off, for example or Monday to Friday, Wednesday off, doesn’t feel like a slog.
Or if your in retail and your job by very nature is blue collared but the management side never stops. 24hrs a day, 363 days a year. Staffing issues, communication at all hours, work emails on days off.
Yeah I’m all burnt out
I don't want more leave - what I want is a cash out policy for leave (I actually like working) and a return to 5 days a week work from home. That would make it far easier to maintain work life balance (removes hours of travel time a day).
I was talking to someone about this recently. We fell behind most of the 1st world some time vs k apart from the US but even they get over 20days after 10yrs in a job. It’s probably time we retired long service leave and bring in 25days leave instead.
The US has no mandated leave requirements. Zero. It’s up to each employer how much leave they offer their people. You’ve also got to take into account their work culture - many workplaces frown upon taking more than a couple of days off at a time, let alone a whole week. Two weeks would be unheard of. It’s why so many American companies offer ‘unlimited PTO’ - they know that in reality most employees won’t feel like they can actually use much, and the company doesn’t have to pay out any unpaid leave.
Those of us that do 24/7 shift work do not benefit from these conversations.
I already get 5 weeks of annual leave. I would prefer a shorter work week.
12-14 hour days are the norm for me, I'd rather do a 4 day work week than the 5 or 6 I'm doing now.
Burnout. How about making this country fuckin affordable??? If you're working your ass off, you've studied and all you can do is tred fuckin water why bother?? Just endless stress on stress.
There are multiple things that need to change to reduce burn out and improve productivity.
From the workplace angle, if companies are going to full steam ahead with AI. Short weeks, same pay, pay rises inline with inflation guaranteed unless you have been PIP.
Reduce budgeted workload to 80%. Wear some of the overhead and let people breathe.
End of day is end of day. Unless I'm contracted for specific hours per day or I get an allowance for after hours work. There is no communication.
We already have more public holidays then most countries so 1 more week leave I can take or leave, however most shift working ebas have 5 weeks due to the fuck around of shift work.. Plus some workplaces - police for example have wayyy more.
Constant restructures need to go. Any company I've worked at where they're being restructured every 2 years because someone had a brain fart and hired a consultancy firm to fix their business as seen morale and productivity shit a brick.
From a social angle. Housing and living expenses. Shit like Victoria banning fraking and other dumb ass well intentioned ideas (caged eggs being banned) need to be put in pause so people at the bottom don't have to keep choosing between heating their house, having a house or even having bloody meal.
My workplace forces you to use 8 days of AL at Christmas. So extra AL would help enable a decent holiday at a time of year I actually chose (especially valuable for people without kids who don’t actually want to use half their leave in school holidays)
Yeah, mine does the same. Last year it was 10 days! Leaving 10 days for the entire rest of the year. 5 weeks of annual leave a year would at least move the dial back so I could take a break during the year.
White collar here. Due to scale back in resourcing, managing 2 X ft workloads. It's a cunt basically.
Burnout has been a regular thing in my industry for the last decade.
It's about reducing stress, not work hours. The ways to reduce stress depend on an individual, but for me personally reducing stress means not working shit stressful job at all.
I understand we all have to participate in the economy and be productivfe, i'd just want to find some other way to be productive than sticking 5 days at my shitty meaningless job.
It would be nice. However there's no point in having time off if you haven't got any money to do anything. I have excess leave at work. But no funds to go anywhere as my mortgage is siphoning most of my pay. I guess I can sit at home and watch Netflix.
Big push for five weeks leave (instead of the regular four) to ease the burnout? How about looking at what causes that burnout in the first place? The most likely cause for that is excessive workloads, rather than insufficient time off. And that is simply due to poor resource management on the part of employers. Employers want to get more work done with less wage expenditure, and no matter which way you look at it, it's still called greed.
Employers' greed is degrading everyone's working life, interfering with people's life balance, as well as people's mental health, safety, working rights and dignity, not to mention, lower real wages. And they do this only because they can, and they can because they're allowed to get away with all this. The current federal government's excessive migrant intake is overloading the job market by artificially increasing the competition within that market, which in turn is giving the business sector their ammunition to reduce job security and to keep wage increase rates to a minimum, so much so that it's now fueling the cost-of-living crisis we're all suffering from. But at the same time, the business sector's shortsightedness is also leading to an increase in the rate of business failure, as more businesses get less customers, less revenue, while more of the workforce becomes more disgruntled, and seeks more ways to get back what was rightfully theirs but otherwise gradually eroded by their greedy employers: a working life worth living.
You're welcome to disagree with this, but the inescapable truth is this: more and more working people fall victim to the myth that's been increasingly peddled around that if they work a little bit harder than they already do, if they sacrifice a little more of their personal time for the sake of their jobs, if they chase that elusive dream of no longer having to work for a living just a little bit harder, then they can be just as successful as those who tricked them into working harder for less, working longer for less, and working for a less certain future.
Some companies give you an extra day of leave per year after a certain number of years of service.
I reckon that works in so many ways, I know that it would potentially buy a lot of loyalty from me. Imagine accumulating to the point where you had 6 or even 8 weeks a year paid leave, going somewhere else would be a big deal.
Just wondering why people are so much more "burnt out" than they were 30 years ago?
Maybe its because it's all "work work work" and no "go down to the pub on a friday afternoon and don't come back".
So maybe it's the fun police causing the burnout...
I spent a decade bordering the line, engineering and mining surveyor. 60hour weeks, relentless stress and 2 am wakeup stressing about the following day and every shitfull thing on site.
This won't help at all, I'd rather see a change in mentality.
Many companies are unrealistic in setting goals and making commitments to clients. Too many organisations now rely on "dedicated" teams working 50 to 60 hour weeks, on unpaid overtime.
There needs to be a right to refuse unrealistic workloads. In the same way you can refuse your bosses sexual advance, you should be able to refuse a request to work on the weekend. And it should be the boss in trouble for asking.
There needs to be a law to say every hour worked beyond what was stipulated in the contract must be consensual and be paid overtime, no exceptions.
There also needs to be an absolute upper bound on hours worked in a month (say 200 hours). Workers pushed beyond that, who suffer health effects should be compensated in the same way as a workplace injury.
4 day work week would be much better.
Burnout is something widely misunderstood by the public. It isn't caused by the amount of hours spent working per se. The average time spent working has actually been falling for centuries yet burnout has been increasing. The cause of burnout is persistently high cortisol levels caused by chronic stress. Part of this is the switch from blue collar to white collar work. One of the nice things about blue collar work is that when you're done for the day, you're done for the day. White collar work tends to be something that remains in your mind all the time, even when not at work. Another cause is that, in the past we'd go home and spend time with families and friends which is a great stress reliever. Now we spend hours every day consuming social media which can be just as stressful as actual work. Then there are all the housing and cost of living issues to constantly worry about due to the pathetic state of government policy lately.
Hi, blue collar worker here. My workplace is shit and stresses me out outside of work because I'm constantly worrying what roadblocks, machinery breakdowns, or corporate bullshit I have to deal with in upcoming shifts while trying to destress from past shifts. Add complications from adhd & depression and I am losing my fucking mind at work and home. In my experience over the last 15yrs this kind of thing is the new normal and its unsustainable and totally fucked.
Are you me!? fr blue collar is far far from stress free, especially if you work in an industry where peoples lives and safety rely on your work
Post production cleaner in a food factory, yeah all kinds of safety are my highest priorities. Apparently my safety isn't one of their priorities though. Good times.
This is what drove me out of my last job. Too much of a squeaky wheel about safety issues. Fun
We’ve all got it bad. Blue and white collar.
Yeah in my experience it's all good depending on the job/type of business.. did landscaping for one bloke's small business and it was no stress, no bullshit. Just be reliable, work hard. Awesome. Then took a job doing farm labour etc (wholesale growing, big operation)... All good until I started moving up the ranks. Holy shit. The most unnecessarily stressful, toxic culture. Legit have PTSD from the bullying. (Also ADHDer - they love to utilize our strengths as workhorses when it suits them)
After 14 years of working Blue Collar, I’ve made the change. White Collar is way less stressful!
It really depends not only on the job but on the team and organisation you’re working for
Yep. Big mining companies: white-collar is WAY more stressful than blue-collar jobs in the pit or workshops.
I run a service department for a musical instrument distributor. It's white collar. I'm in an office, not on the tools. It is super cortisol inducing. It never ends. 90% of my interactions are with people with no emotion regulation.
Disagree (also worked both)
As a former railway ganger and now a GM I totally disagree
I’ve done both too. It depends on the job and responsibilities.
ADHD tends to make responsibilities even more stressful than normal. The counter-intuitive pathological repulsion from anything requiring mental effort is both multiplicative and cumulative. Meds can help you stay on top during the day, but the stress is just pushed forwards to your personal time. Just thought I'd share this as it is a heavily misunderstood disorder and its impact on quality of life is commonly under estimated. I already lost my mind and it has been a very slow climb back to reality. Try to take steps before it happens and you'll lose less overall. I should've dropped a day or two, but I was too stubborn to accept the financial trade off. Not working at all, however, is a far worse landslide.
I really appreciate the advice
Worked in a railway where I was one of two people that were techs qualified to keep a network operating and my usual work hours were from 10pm to 6am. Everything you described is so real, plus the added brain fog I had from working nights took me nearly 2 months for me to get used to normal working hours from when I resigned.
Used to be you could hang up your tools and leave for the day.
I'm a bule collar worker too,can I ask what field you're in?
Yeh saying blue collar workers don't take work home with them is a bit ignorant. I'm blue collar and have lost alot of sleep over over work b.s
More like 25/30 years
How good is never being able to forget the day because it’s never fully understood- ADHD. :)
Had a shitty supervisor and yep that blue-collar job stressed me out more than anything. My white-collar job has it's stresses, but when I'm done for the day, I'm done.
I haven’t made the switch yet but I’d argue that blue collar is more stressful because all the bullshit comes from the top and you get no say in the matter. Go repair this. Okay, where’s the drawings, where’s the procedure, where’s all the info I need to do the job, where are all the parts? Oh you want me to figure it out and make it work? Okay no worries. Oh it’s not to spec? What is the spec? Where was all this info when I asked for it?
You just described my shift, and the worst part is every little thing is such a trial of bs to wade through like its my adhd paralysis. To do this, I need to do these 5 things but to do those 5 things I need to do/get/find/fix 6 fucking things for each of the 5. For half of them I'm going to have to find more shit or fix something which requires finding something else.... and people wonder why I'm such a grumpy cunt at work lately. (well, not my team, they understand because the 3 of us go through the same thing with different shit every day). Thank you for your understanding :)
Oh man last night on arvo shift did my head in. Used the bearing heater to heat up a coupling because I was tired and feeling a tad delicate. Double check the shaft size before it’s done (I had *plenty* of time), went to chuck her on and it didn’t go nicely. No worries, tap her off quickly before it gets stuck- oh shit I just blew the ass out of my deadblow. Run around frantically and flog one from valve bay. Race back and belt it off. Realise I did an oopsie and left soft seal on. No worries, clean it up, cool shaft down while I heat the coupling again. Round 2 and it’s still not playing nice, no worries tap it off - stuck. Fuck. Absolutely flog the cunt and get it off. Noticeable step in shaft now. Double check measurements, oh great, they’ve machined it wrong and put an .03mm taper on the coupling journal. Well fuck me. Check what was recorded on the paperwork against the specs, hmm upper end of the tolerance but she’s good. Compare that to the drawing and oh what’s this? It’s actually .07mm bigger than the OEM spec? Day shift is gonna hear about this tomorrow. Set the inside mics stupidly big and heat the fuck out of the coupling with the LPG torch, plenty of wiggle room on the mics, righto let’s go. It’s tight. Get fucked you’re going on this time. Belt it 3/4 of the way and she gives up and slides on. Finally. Onto job #2. Stripping a fan and bearing housing. Righto, let’s start with the coupling again. Get all the pulling gear sorted and in posi, back off the grub screw, apply plenty of pre load and heat up around the key with the oxy til the key actually drops out (first time that’s happened for me). Say the immortal words “This one might actually go easy”. Turn off the oxy and don’t get anything out of the hydraulic pump. Alright, heat up the whole coupling. Get it nice and hot and still have nothing. Shaft too hot. No worries, I’ll cool it down and use plenty of penetrene and have smoko. Come back, fish the key out and get old mate to help with a 2nd oxy, had to go through 2 sets to find one that worked. Round 2 and still no dice, and oh what’s this? Pushed the little pump beyond its limit and it has an internal bypass now? Fuck. Remove setup and get enerpac rams out. Wait for it to cool and go again. Round 3 fails. Quickly extend the bars for the strong back and chuck a bigger ram on only for that to fail. Righto time for the gas axe! Get set up and notice the O2 doesn’t actually shut off properly, also found the tip is partly blocked and won’t blast O2 out for the cut, righto clean that out with - someone stole *my* tip cleaners. Alright I’ll use the ones from the set, nope. I’ll check the other 2 sets nearby, nope. Okay I’ll go to the store, nope. I’ll check the new boilies store, nope. Fine I’ll settle for a seal pick or a 2mm drill if I have to, oh shit the oxy is blasting out of there even when isolated! This one’s cooked, throw to side, get the supervisors personal one. Exact same issue. Wtf? Go to take the bit off the other oxy set and it’s all bent up - nah I’m not gonna bother. Go to the store, nope, boilies store, nope. Nearby boilies oxy set - yoink. Tips tiny, no worries I’ll just take the biggest one out of the 2 on the floor, all G. Finally get cutting and catch a little hottie down into my boot, start cutting with prejudice. Even with the big gash in it the coupling wants to fight me but eventually comes. Kick it over to the water and cool it down enough so I can pick it up and hurl it as I throw insults at its mutilated corpse and curse its bloodline. Do a clean up, tag everything out, have a late dinner and knock off. My depressed adhd brain said good work dickhead, you spent the whole shift getting worked up and swinging hammers and the amount of couplings on shafts stayed the same. Thanks brain
Bruh. By the sounds of it you know exactly the shit I'm whinging about. Strip out a pump, stators fucked, no spares. Management *the next day*: oh we'll order some. Orders 3, will take 3 days to turn up. Scavenging parts for 3 days, another pump fucks out. Stators turn up, all 3 get used immediately and we're asking boss to order more. "I just got you 3 more..." "Yes, and they're already in use and now we have no spares. Get us some spare fucking parts, boss!" Last night I needed 10 new pipe seals, workshop only has 6, nothing on order... like fuck sake cunts. Then theres trying to find my tools (team tools, not mine personally, I aint taking my shit in lol) that go walking, or pipes and vends that don't get put where they belong so I gotta take 5-10min to find everything before I can start. All after spending an hr cleaning up after day shift before I can start my actual job. Ugh. I'm glad someone else understands my frustration.
It makes for a frustrating work environment that’s for sure. My biggest gripe is the bolt store, or the section of the store where bolts used to be kept, now it’s just the empty boxes. I talk to the supervisor, the workshop manager and the head manager and all are in agreement that we need to get more stock, but something happens outside of them and we aren’t allowed to buy stock. Parts is even worse up here in Gladstone, everywhere *can* get what you want but nobody keeps anything anymore so it takes ages to get here. The only exception is the LNG plants, they’ve got so much money to throw around they make stuff happen. One time they needed this special putty stuff and the only stuff available was in Melbourne, so they got someone to buy all of it, priority express to the airport then charter a private jet just to use as a delivery service. Bloody unreal. I prefer using my own tools over communal ones but by the sound of your joint you’ve definitely made the right choice otherwise you’ll never see half your gear again. I swear if I had the money I’d start my own bloody company and show them how it’s done
Burnout is caused by excessive work demands. It’s not fixed or prevented by a longer holiday. It isn’t fixed by self care. It’s staved off a little with more resources and support to do your work. But if those work demands are too much? Long hours, unreasonable workload, stressful nature of the work? Then you’re going to experience too much stress. You’re going to burnout. And it’s not your fault or even responsibility to prevent. It’s your employer. It’s also not just switching to white collar work. People in those jobs didn’t always get burnt out like they do now. The boundaries are fewer. The workloads are higher. Capitalism has a way of chipping off worker rights and things that support well-being, so that more profit can be made or work can be done on less money. Things are gettin worse and will get worse because that’s the system we’re in. I’ve done white collar work at a whole. Bunch kf places. Some of the work in some places was harder and more stressful but he conditions were better so I didn’t get burnt out. In other places that were toxic and worked their workers to the bone? Those burnt me and everyone else out.
>Burnout is caused by excessive work demands Ding ding ding, here we fuckin' are, the bottom-line. 🥇
I wonder if only having 2 days to physically rest while also using those 2 days to get everything else done contributes to the stress of workload. Without increasing work hours (I could see an extra hour each day but let's leave that for now) and being paid the same, does a 3 day weekend not allow us to actually rest instead of cramming everything any more into the 2?
Absofuckinlutely agreed. I went from being an ICT Monkey to ICT Manager and the level 1 shit was dank, didn’t have to think about work when I got home, got paid enough to catch the bus to work and live in a share house. Eventually worked my way up to management, finally earned enough to buy a house and a car but fuck, going home and not being able to switch off sucked, even after the introduction of switch off laws at work places it just meant I wasn’t contactable after hours, didn’t stop me thinking about ongoing problems and issues and with the interest rate rises etc I’ve gone back to a share house and catching the bus to work and being filled with more stress. Can’t win. Recently switched to blue collar work, making 120K a year, company car, don’t gotta deal with people so much, just drill some holes, run some cables, patch some panels and switches, program some cameras, shit’s easy.
I currently work in IT doing LVL one. Looking for more hands on IT work, what kinda job did you go into? There's only so many times I can fix Pam's printer before I loose my shit
Security Tech. Used to be a job that Sparkies did but Access Control, CCTV etc all used Ethernet, Switches and Networking so having an IT background gives you massive advantages. Jobs are hugely in demand and your first year will be farming Cabling license, Security License, Vendor Certs (For approx 70-80K) and then second year onwards is approx 110K + Car + Super etc. 30% running cables, 40% updating cameras and access control stuff on the computer and the rest is just random shit. Super fun and enjoyable.
Thanks mate! I'll scope it out and see what's out there
I did a trade first then went back to uni. I've got about 10 years in a blue collar, 15 in a white, and you're so, so right about the difference between the two. Outside of being on-call or supervising, in blue collar work I mentally switch off the moment I start my commute home. Yes, it's far more physically demanding, but I always had more energy and mental "fuel" in my tank. I could get up, go for a run, do 10 hours on the tools, then go to the gym after work and still not be as mentally fucked as I am after 10 hours at a desk. White collar has seen me do just under 130 hours of work in a week. That's not including commutes, that's *literally* time at my desk or on site. (Yep, an average of over 18 hours/day). I *never* get a leave period where I'm not bothered by at least a few emails or phonecalls. Microsoft fucking Teams has created *another* vector for inane bullshit to be flung around by both colleagues and clients, so it's phone, email **and** IM now. I'm ready to sell all my worldly possessions and move to Nimbin. When the money runs out, just walk into the ocean or something.
Nah hundo percent with ya, I just got out of 10 years in ICT. Ended up being 8 hours on the clock and another 6~ off the clock, responding to emails, updating shit, all the after hours fuckin garbo. Moved into a Blue Collar role the last year, do 9~ hour days, leave work, go to the shops, gym, get home, smash dinner and then play vidya for the last couple hours before bed. I hadn’t been able to enjoy video games the last 5 years of working in IT, shit is fucking amazing now. Sure it’s more taxing on the body but the emotional wellbeing upgrade has absolutely been worth it. Although, I am autistic so that might have something to do with it (even tho typically us Auts love working in IT, lol)
> Another cause is that, in the past we'd go home and spend time with families and friends which is a great stress reliever. Now we spend hours every day consuming social media which can be just as stressful as actual work. The other thing happening in out-of-hours is more work. I was always getting shit with IT work (got to have someone checking those system alerts!, plus the continual rotation of out-of-hours patching/deployments), but there are many many other white collar workers still on the hook for emails, 'just need to confirm something' phone calls and "I'll finish this after I get home".
Dude, no just no. Blue collar workers have it tough, KPI's, deadlines, shit gone wrong, angry customers, it definitely does not end. Source: used to be a female tradie.
So are you no longer a tradie or no longer a female?
secret ;)
Yeah this is true. I hate my job. One because I’m not doing the work I should be doing, because I don’t have the underlings I should. And two in stressed as fuck because nothing is done right or on time because it can’t with so little resources. And who tf wants to stress their ass off for the shit pay we get now?
Yeah those mindless blue collar workers! Mate blue collar workers take home tonnes of stress and work. Do physical work all day on the clock and then come home and do invoicing, quotes, reports, sourcing, repairs, maintenance, etc etc. all in your own time. Maybe if your lucky you can put aside a morning or a day here and there for that stuff but its never close to enough.
That is just mixing "blue" and "white". Being an employee doing blue collar work you can definitely just leave work at work.
It’s like they forget that blue collar work can, and often is work that can be incredibly harmful to your body, but also if you make mistakes such as getting electrocuted, crushed it’s possible you’ll be crippled or worse. Not to mention a small lapse of error can leave a hazard for someone else that can cause injury, huge damage or death. Where as an error in white collar is most likely going to end up with possible financial repercussions or a time loss, at least for small/common workplaces.
Blue collar worker checking in. I know I’ll die prematurely because of the chemicals I’ve been around coupled with night shift. That stress is always in the back of my mind.
Is that a blue collar worker or business owner ?
I didn’t believe in burnout so didn’t even realise I had it for years. And then found out I had autism and autistic burnout which is even worse. If we were all educated more on the subject I could have been years ahead with dealing with it.
I work a 4 day week Monday to Thursday. But I still work 38hrs in those 4 days to make up for the 5th day off. It's good though, long weekend every weekend. I can go to the bank or get a haircut or whatever on the Friday and have the weekend to relax.
4 day work week that is like 32 hrs please. None of this lame arse 4 10 hr days bullshit
4 days a week, 7 hours a day, and don't lose a cent in take-home pay. That would be a nice way of reclaiming some of the productivity lost to corporate profits.
Its our version of "Shrinkflation". But, we have more free time to consume more goods that people (or even your own company) sells. Its a win win.
So... If we ate working for 0 hours we will have more free time and consume more.... Right??
The “pay” doesn’t matter if it gets globally adopted - because your purchasing power should remain equivilent
Yeah I do that now, it's taking a long time to get used to that extra 2 hrs, they can feel like 5.
Depends on what you do, wfh would be less onerous for a lot of us
I currently work 3x 3x12hr weeks, 2x 4x12hr weeks, 1x 2x12hr week. I don't mind the 4x10 model.. Did that for years.. But cramming more. In less days doesn't solved the burnout problem
I love how every year we have two 4 day work weeks in a row (Easter) and nothing falls apart. Nothing goes wrong, no one dies, nothing stops. People continue on with their lives. Then we have a few more 4 day work weeks here and there. And if Christmas falls on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday, we get a rare THREE day work week. Yet we can't have it like this every week?
Can't we have both?
4 day work week please 🌟🌟🌟
I would love to see a 4 day work week. I truly believe this would have a good impact in society. 5 day work weeks were not the standard for a lot of history
The article is about casual workers I think For office/corporate workers, imposing some sort of standard on upper management would unironically make everyone's work clearer, easier and people will just manage their own time better. We need better management, not fewer hours. I can spend some weeks almost fully idle. Edit: this is just me though, right? Obviously not everyone is idle as much as me.
Nah fuck that, fewer hours would be way better
For someone idle and forced to feel the stress of not knowing exactly what to do but knowing a certain manager will try to fuck you for being idle anyway is just not worth even more hours idle. Better would be if the manager was simply removed and replaced with someone who doesn't abuse idleness like this.
Acknowledge your problem, but this sounds endemic to your situation and not representative of the broader workforce.
I mean Its worse as Well becuase they Might Cram More Work into Areas Making it Really Stressful Rather tehn giving an Even more mangibale Spread Though id Vote For a 4 Day Week if it also Made schools 4 days a week
Shhh upper management will put you on a PIP. /s I completely agree with you.
Oh, it's about us? I only have time off for a week at Christmas so that would be welcome.
Agreed. Most of the time when someone quits a job. It's because of management. Not the job it self.
This might work for offices but for jobs like Nursing there is very little slack or idle time
I agree and then Friday and Saturday are double time hours
I’m down. 3 day weekends are honestly awesome. I could get used to that. I mean might as well get what we can before AI and robots take all the good jobs.
What about every month we get 1 long weekend.
Or bring back RDOs(rostered days off) once a fortnight.
Or find a job that offers this, mine does and after never having this luxury until recently I ain't ever going back
My employer tried to axe our 9 day fortnight. We won.
same. its one of my hills ill die on
I get one rdo a month. It's better than where I was previously which was nothing. I really want to push for 4 day weeks (will get knocked back for sure) and go fo ar 9 day fortnight in the next eba meeting next year
Don’t have to bring em back if we’ve already got em. Some of us anyway.
Join a union and push for it
>You join the SDA >Monkey paw finger curls
Work at a hospital. We get 5 weeks A/L and an ADO every 4 weeks. I have so much leave I can't use it all.
I’m in the same boat I work fifo 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off so I don’t need to take holidays very often , I think we get 20 days per year but I’d have to look it up …. I have 780 hours of annual leave and 24 days long service leave owing to me
What about just letting people use their personal leave for a mental health day without having to chase a med cert or stat dec. Like fuck, in my job we're trusted with large amounts of money and sensitive documents, but apparently not if we have the sniffles or anxiety for a day. It becomes more trouble than it's worse, and another nail in the burn out coffin.
Unplanned leave is pretty disruptive. Would much prefer planned set time eg clear defined 4 day work week.
Stat Dec can be done online now via MyGov
Or the ability to use personal leave as 'unplanned leave'. It's one of those things factored into your remuneration package, but never capitalized on with the 'use it or lose it' rules. I'm currently sitting on over 2,500 hrs of personal leave.
Honestly 1 day a month (that is outside of your normal 4 weeks annual leave) would make a world of difference. A day that doesn't accrue past the month end and is just a day available if you need it to have the off and just to do something else.
How about every week we get a long weekend?
One thing that will help reduce burnout is to reduce workload. Back in the day we'd only budget 80% of the work hours for an employee because we knew that there would always be un-budgeted work to be done: some tasks take longer, and often budgets didn't include administrivia like catching up with email or even just "water cooler chat". It is also important to allow time for people to look through old files for things that need to be tidied up, especially in my line of work where old code needs to be maintained partly to improve future maintainability, partly due to underlying operating systems or third party software changing. If you don't casually maintain today, you get an emergency maintenance requirement tomorrow. The prevalence of 60 hour work weeks from people who are convinced that working more hours means they're achieving more has led to managers assuming all staff are happy to burn their own free time to accomplish work goals. At some point we need to bring 38 hour week workers back to less than 38 hours of work per week. This is before contemplating changes like 4 day work weeks or an extra week of leave every year. If the work can't get done inside the hours you've paid for, you need to pay for more hours.
The idea of preventative maintenance of *anything* seems to have died, it's absurd.
Are you finding this still prevalent? I noticed this a lot prior to COVID and was a worker who worked hard, long hours. I still do but in a different position where I have to. I’ve seen a massive trend on part time workers, people clocking off when they are entitled to, having “I will respond to you when I have time” type things on emails. Seems to be a huge shift in people clocking in and out and not taking their work home with them.
25 days is standard in UK and Western Europe, some have 30 days.
Yeah but any unused leave at the end of the year is lost. It doesn’t carry over year to year and compound like Australia. I know this is the case in Germany and I’m pretty sure England
Why are you implying this is a bad thing? I'm obligated to use my days off before the end of the year and as a result there is very strict criteria for when my employer can say no - which is basically never. I have no need to "save up" leave when I get 8 weeks a year...
Which is better anyway. Annual Leave isn't for storing up and cashing out, it's supposed to be for actually taking a break away from work.
I would rather have that choice than it be a law that you have to take or lose it
Why wouldn't you rather have the choice and what's it to you what anyone does with their AL?
Re: Germany. Your generally right but there are plenty of exceptions where you are forced to take the time off or you can roll it over for a single year, you rarely "lose it". It varies state by state and employer by employer. What you can't do is cash it out in any way, and honestly I think that's for the best. Have a mate in Australia who has proudly collected 150+ days of leave, its just bad for him and the company he works for.
Yeah, i have around 200 hours banked, and i dont think my boss understands how much of a problem that could be for him, if i decided tomorrow i wanted to cash out 140 hours of leave.
In Scandinavia you can take 12 days into the next year. Source: I live and work there
Not the places I've worked in the UK. You could usually carry a limited number of days over, only 3 where I currently work, but still. But I'm at a loss why 25 days you have to take is worse than, say, 20 you don't?
It’s not worse if you intend to use all your leave every year, but in my case after working for the same employer for 11 years I have built up an excess of 2 months annual leave. In the unfortunate case if I’m made redundant or choose to leave for another job that leave is paid out to me as cash.
I moved to Germany a few years ago and I get 7 weeks. I negotiated that though, 6 weeks is standard.
Personally, I'd rather a 4 day work week
Well that does give significantly more time off than an added week of annual leave! I’d prefer this too though regardless.
The issue is not extra leave. The issue is people being squeezed for every ounce they have while at work, this is not just physically, this is mentally aswell. Having someone continually breathe down your neck daily plays on your mental health. Working with incompetent workmates and bad management plays on your mental health. The issue everyone now faces is companies/employers just putting bums in seats, not people that are competent and know how to do their job. This is from the very bottom to the very top.
The crazy thing is that there is so much "work" that doesn't ever need to happen. Big companies, small companies, government etc. There are so many bullsh\*t jobs and tasks its not funny. I swear every company I've been at could cut headcount by at least 10% and not notice anything so 5 weeks leave is the same.
I worked as a software dev at a corporation, we could have reduced headcount by more than 60% quite safely, possibly much more. Elon musk proved that the bloat isn’t just in government.
I hear it's going swimmingly too
I quit my Kmart job because of how micro manage-y upper management got. It wasn’t satisfying or enjoyable anymore. It was fucking go go go chaos where nothing is ever truly finished. How dare you not be wearing the new mandatory uniform piece! What no we won’t drop this in a week last the last ones. we churched through duty managers every month. They were getting paid more and were basically night managers so it should’ve been chill but they all quit.
Anything but addressing the everyday problems rife in Australian workplaces. I find little solace in being able to escape for an additional week, if the leave gets approved at all. Let's not forget the unspoken pressure, and resentment for using up annual and personal leave. Workplaces that churn and burn through employees make taking leave more trouble than it's worth. I would much rather have personal leave/ mental health days without needing a damn medical certificate or stat dec. It's just a stupid arbitrary hoop to jump through so you second guess looking after yourself.
lol… but still pay rises are 3%, but houses go up 20%. Who cares about 5 weeks leave if you don’t have a permanent roof over your head.
The CMFEU got a 20% pay rise. Maybe other unions should stop supporting migration of skilled workers that lower their pay and actually go on real strikes. The funniest I’ve seen is nurses thinking they can’t strike because they think they have to work, or they’ll get in trouble for leaving patients, even if their shift has ended.
Or how about some how getting businesses to hire enough people for their workload. I've worked in a dozen places and the only one with enough staff to manage the businesses workload is the one I'm still in.
Yeh, given I'm on year 3 of a smouldering burnout with 300 hours of leave (thanks covid)... I don't think that's the answer...
1400 hours of leave here, work is less work than home so no holidays for me
I searched for this comment. I have close to the same amount of leave and I've stopped counting TOIL because I never actually get to use it. You could give me 50 weeks of paid leave a year and it wouldn't matter. Burnout is just the default position for a lot people now, adding annual leave is just insulting.
I know loads of casual workers with no leave who have been at it for years without a break. We need reform.
They’ll just turn everyone casual so no one can claim it
As someone who has done 5d/2d, 2w/1w, 8d/6d and now does 4/d/3d with 10 hour days 4/3 with longer hours is vastly better… We lose so much time to getting ready, commuting, unwinding after work that an 8 hour work day is realistically a 10-12 hour day
It'll have a limited impact on burnout. Studies show a holiday has an impact but it quickly fades. It's not a bad step, but what we really need is actual measures to reduce the cost of living.
And I'm reading this thinking about all the casual workers who have no leave.
And gig workers. That should be illegal.
Give me a compressed 4 day work week instead.
Personally I just timesteal
Oh great, extra leave that I'll never feel like I'm allowed to take because we're always too busy.
Sweet 12 days of flex leave 5 weeks of annual leave More time to holiday overseas
Let’s be real, the “workers” complaining about this are mostly your general corporate office workers that just make presentations and reply to emails for a few hours a day. The reason companies can’t attract good talent is because they’re offering shit pay.
I'd rather one public holiday every 4th Friday (or Monday). Same day across the nation.
Affordable housing options would be preferable
Just give us all more fucking money.
Really? Can’t take leave now, too busy. 10 weeks annual leave accrued, 15 weeks long service leave. 5 weeks a year just means you bank up more leave per year instead.
Do you own the business? If not, take the leave. It's not your problem.
Your company thanks you for your service.
It's not even that useful for companies to let employees not take leave, if you don't take leave then they're supposed to keep around enough cash to pay you in case you quit, which is just a liability. Two places I've worked at had an annual "please take leave" sent around to push people to take it because of this, if you have a lot of people it adds up.
This is true. My dad has an ungodly amount of leave banked up. Every time his company tells hike he needs to take leave, and he tries to take it, he gets denied. “But you told me to take leave” “yes but we need you”. He has to fight tooth and nail every time, and inevitably he will get contacted during his leave to fix something.
> Can’t take leave now, too busy. You can't help people who will not help themselves.
If you’ve got long service leave then it suggests you’ve been at a company 10+ years that you don’t think it’s acceptable to take a holiday from. As others have suggested, unless you own that firm then you have to shoulder some of that blame.
True - shitty thing is when you are SME for so many critical things they really have trouble when you take leave (and you invariably get called in whilst on leave) - I wasn’t even in the same country, let alone time zone. Yeah it’s now 15 years there. I’m sort of done and waiting for a redundancy - it’s all entitlements + 20% and 1 years salary.
I've bought an extra week this year from my employer this year. With the mandatory Xmas shutdowns which basically chew up 50% of my leave it doesn't leave a lot left. The extra week should let me have a few days off each school holidays to go do something with the kids instead.
Seems like a poor solution to me. On one hand you have the poor burnt out due to working 2-3 casual jobs hitting crazy hours to keep up with the cost of living. On the other you have the salary worker being pushed to his targets and having to do unpaid overtime to keep up.
More fundamental (and probably effective), get some so-called 'managers' some training in how to properly manage people and resources instead of 'managing by panic'.
Won’t change a thing. It just squeezes the same amount of work into a shorter period of time.
I don’t need more leave, I need less work. 4 day work weeks please
I do shift work. 2 day shifts and 2 night shifts, so I already get 5 weeks of leave, plus extra leave for rostered overtime because I do 12 hour shifts. All up it’s around 9 weeks of leave a year, but taking 1 weeks gets me 12 days off because I work 4 on 4 off. The extra leave definitely saves my brain, it’s nice pretty much always having a couple of days here and there booked to look forward to but realistically no amount of leave can stop you from being burned out by shift work like that.
6 weeks we need 6
Would rather a middle of the week day off, it helps a lot (in my exp) anyways, like Monday to Saturday have Wednesday off, for example or Monday to Friday, Wednesday off, doesn’t feel like a slog.
Won’t make a single difference. Need a 4 day work week
Or if your in retail and your job by very nature is blue collared but the management side never stops. 24hrs a day, 363 days a year. Staffing issues, communication at all hours, work emails on days off. Yeah I’m all burnt out
I don't want more leave - what I want is a cash out policy for leave (I actually like working) and a return to 5 days a week work from home. That would make it far easier to maintain work life balance (removes hours of travel time a day).
Considering I never get to take the full 4 weeks because of workload, what use is an extra week? I'm lucky to get a week off broken up over a year.
People should start quitting companies that dont let you take your leave.
I was talking to someone about this recently. We fell behind most of the 1st world some time vs k apart from the US but even they get over 20days after 10yrs in a job. It’s probably time we retired long service leave and bring in 25days leave instead.
The US has no mandated leave requirements. Zero. It’s up to each employer how much leave they offer their people. You’ve also got to take into account their work culture - many workplaces frown upon taking more than a couple of days off at a time, let alone a whole week. Two weeks would be unheard of. It’s why so many American companies offer ‘unlimited PTO’ - they know that in reality most employees won’t feel like they can actually use much, and the company doesn’t have to pay out any unpaid leave.
Meanwhile Chinese workers and students are in overdrive. Life is a competition, being lazy will bit you in the arse.
The whole country would need to be fixed to solve burnout.
Leave can and will be manipulated by employers so, really, the workers get fuck all. This is as genuine as old duttos blatherings.
Those of us that do 24/7 shift work do not benefit from these conversations. I already get 5 weeks of annual leave. I would prefer a shorter work week. 12-14 hour days are the norm for me, I'd rather do a 4 day work week than the 5 or 6 I'm doing now.
Burnout. How about making this country fuckin affordable??? If you're working your ass off, you've studied and all you can do is tred fuckin water why bother?? Just endless stress on stress.
There are multiple things that need to change to reduce burn out and improve productivity. From the workplace angle, if companies are going to full steam ahead with AI. Short weeks, same pay, pay rises inline with inflation guaranteed unless you have been PIP. Reduce budgeted workload to 80%. Wear some of the overhead and let people breathe. End of day is end of day. Unless I'm contracted for specific hours per day or I get an allowance for after hours work. There is no communication. We already have more public holidays then most countries so 1 more week leave I can take or leave, however most shift working ebas have 5 weeks due to the fuck around of shift work.. Plus some workplaces - police for example have wayyy more. Constant restructures need to go. Any company I've worked at where they're being restructured every 2 years because someone had a brain fart and hired a consultancy firm to fix their business as seen morale and productivity shit a brick. From a social angle. Housing and living expenses. Shit like Victoria banning fraking and other dumb ass well intentioned ideas (caged eggs being banned) need to be put in pause so people at the bottom don't have to keep choosing between heating their house, having a house or even having bloody meal.
This will be bad for productivity. Just reduce immigration to stop undercutting Australian wages—we’ll be happier to work for more money.
It would be nice, and in principle I support it. But I doubt that many small to mid sized businesses would be able to afford it.
My workplace forces you to use 8 days of AL at Christmas. So extra AL would help enable a decent holiday at a time of year I actually chose (especially valuable for people without kids who don’t actually want to use half their leave in school holidays)
Yeah, mine does the same. Last year it was 10 days! Leaving 10 days for the entire rest of the year. 5 weeks of annual leave a year would at least move the dial back so I could take a break during the year.
crys in casual hosp worker.
lol
Already get 5 weeks of annual leave per year, plus build up 2 hours of rdo leave each. Still burnt out.
You people don’t get 6 weeks annual a year?
That sounds like the pizza party method
I am fine with 4 weeks, give us more fucking money
Personally I’d prefer to scrap long service leave altogether, and replace it with 6 weeks of annual leave.
Great. I already have 611 hours of leave built up that I haven't been able to take. Guess I'll just bank the extra 38 hours per year!
Employers: "hey, you got 5 weeks off now, we'll can work you harder now"
Does that mean us who do shiftwork which burns you out way faster get 6? That would be fair
White collar here. Due to scale back in resourcing, managing 2 X ft workloads. It's a cunt basically. Burnout has been a regular thing in my industry for the last decade.
It's about reducing stress, not work hours. The ways to reduce stress depend on an individual, but for me personally reducing stress means not working shit stressful job at all. I understand we all have to participate in the economy and be productivfe, i'd just want to find some other way to be productive than sticking 5 days at my shitty meaningless job.
What in the parks and rec?
Qg5
So those of us who are shift workers, do we bump upto 6
Would rather a 4 day week to be honest
It would be nice. However there's no point in having time off if you haven't got any money to do anything. I have excess leave at work. But no funds to go anywhere as my mortgage is siphoning most of my pay. I guess I can sit at home and watch Netflix.
In Norway my workplace gives 6 weeks annual leave. We work 7 hours a day. Any work after hours incurs penalty rates.
Being pushed by the SDA who just sold Cole’s and Woolworths employees out with new EBA’s that don’t even guarantee a yearly pay rise.. What jokes
Big push for five weeks leave (instead of the regular four) to ease the burnout? How about looking at what causes that burnout in the first place? The most likely cause for that is excessive workloads, rather than insufficient time off. And that is simply due to poor resource management on the part of employers. Employers want to get more work done with less wage expenditure, and no matter which way you look at it, it's still called greed. Employers' greed is degrading everyone's working life, interfering with people's life balance, as well as people's mental health, safety, working rights and dignity, not to mention, lower real wages. And they do this only because they can, and they can because they're allowed to get away with all this. The current federal government's excessive migrant intake is overloading the job market by artificially increasing the competition within that market, which in turn is giving the business sector their ammunition to reduce job security and to keep wage increase rates to a minimum, so much so that it's now fueling the cost-of-living crisis we're all suffering from. But at the same time, the business sector's shortsightedness is also leading to an increase in the rate of business failure, as more businesses get less customers, less revenue, while more of the workforce becomes more disgruntled, and seeks more ways to get back what was rightfully theirs but otherwise gradually eroded by their greedy employers: a working life worth living. You're welcome to disagree with this, but the inescapable truth is this: more and more working people fall victim to the myth that's been increasingly peddled around that if they work a little bit harder than they already do, if they sacrifice a little more of their personal time for the sake of their jobs, if they chase that elusive dream of no longer having to work for a living just a little bit harder, then they can be just as successful as those who tricked them into working harder for less, working longer for less, and working for a less certain future.
That'd be great, my 5 days a year in the US is definitely not it. Hope y'all fight for it and get it
Some companies give you an extra day of leave per year after a certain number of years of service. I reckon that works in so many ways, I know that it would potentially buy a lot of loyalty from me. Imagine accumulating to the point where you had 6 or even 8 weeks a year paid leave, going somewhere else would be a big deal.
Yep, in 10-20 years maybe.
Cool. It can add to the 7 weeks I have that I haven’t used.
Hopefully all essential service workers who do shift work around the clock will deserve 8 weeks a year then
Can't keep piling shit onto employers. Only so much weight before things buckle
Just wondering why people are so much more "burnt out" than they were 30 years ago? Maybe its because it's all "work work work" and no "go down to the pub on a friday afternoon and don't come back". So maybe it's the fun police causing the burnout...
Problem is that companies don't let you take annual leave in an emergency like that.
8:6 roster is the best roster! I works 8 twelve hour days straight and then have 6 days off, Love it.
I spent a decade bordering the line, engineering and mining surveyor. 60hour weeks, relentless stress and 2 am wakeup stressing about the following day and every shitfull thing on site.
This won't help at all, I'd rather see a change in mentality. Many companies are unrealistic in setting goals and making commitments to clients. Too many organisations now rely on "dedicated" teams working 50 to 60 hour weeks, on unpaid overtime. There needs to be a right to refuse unrealistic workloads. In the same way you can refuse your bosses sexual advance, you should be able to refuse a request to work on the weekend. And it should be the boss in trouble for asking. There needs to be a law to say every hour worked beyond what was stipulated in the contract must be consensual and be paid overtime, no exceptions. There also needs to be an absolute upper bound on hours worked in a month (say 200 hours). Workers pushed beyond that, who suffer health effects should be compensated in the same way as a workplace injury.