Go Home On Time Day
Blog Post | Blog of Rachel Siewert
Thursday 29th October 2009, 3:15pm
by TimNorton in
We can all find it tricky to leave the office or finish work on time. That's why this November 25th is national Go Home on Time Day. It's your opportunity to postpone all those "one last thing" tasks, emails and late meetings, and leave work on time for a change. What you do next is up to you!
The latest research from The Australia Institute finds that Australians work more than 2 billion hours of unpaid overtime every year! Around half of all employees work more hours than they are paid for. On average, a typical employee works 49 minutes of unpaid overtime per day. For full-time workers, the average daily amount of unpaid work takes more than one hour.
Overwork can have negative consequences for your physical and mental health, your relationships with loved ones and your sense of what is important in life.
Go Home On Time Day is an initiative of The Australia Institute, the country's most influential progressive think tank. Based in Canberra, it conducts research on a broad range of economic, social and environmental issues in order to inform public debate and bring greater accountability to the democratic process.
To show your support and get your personalised leave pass and reminder, visit the Go Home on Time Day website.
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go home on time day
Actually we probably don't want our ambulance driver, firefighter, doctor or lawyer to go home on time if they're doing vital work on our case. We probably don't want our preacher to sit home and watch TV when we call her to the hospital to help us with a dying relative. But we do need to help these workers balance their days and have free time as they can. Trusting their judgment is key. The Michael Moore movie would have us also notice airline pilot flying times as a problem and other careers also do push the most work the employer can get out of someone for the same low price. Many put in those hours for fear of losing the job and because they are so understaffed now it's them or nobody to get it done anyway. We could employ a lot more people productively if people were not so overstretched but it would take not just a change in employer budgetting but also a change in tax law to not permit overdemanding hours.
Well thought through!
Well done Beverley.
Well thought through, we need a 24x7 support system in life, and that's the whole point, the hours above and beyond 40hrs should be made available to others. Others who need to flexible hours and the flexible income.
I'm sure discussions on topic of working hours will live on till the end of time itself.
:-)
Thank for that !:) go home on time day initiative
This is a very important initiative and I hope it will be become a National Day across Australia to promote the physical and mental health and relationaship health of all employees ( and volunteers )
Time away from your other personal responsibilities - can be a relief, but it can also put the strain further onto others in your life who have to take up the slack whether they like it or not.
And its so easy to do .. The employer usually doesn't mind, and sometimes insists ...- the co-workers can often be in unofficial cahoots, if the culture of the workplace is such that to prove worthiness one must work extra on top of what one is officially paid for....
The reminder of a day such as this that these unofficial and official pressures exist and it will help us renegotiate our lifestyle, to balance paid and unpaid committments ,to get more rounded and deeper experiences out of life, and give priority to keeping track of your own and loved ones mental and physical health.
We hopefully will become a more compassionate society; less fuelled with narrow workplace and comsumerist competition and more focussed on our local communities, family, and natural environment and their protection.
It wont be OK for Dads to go home late after work to isolated or stranded housewives without extended family backup who really need their support with raising kids as much as with finance, and who need this support 24/7 not just on weekends.
We should all be prepared to ask that those who regularly donate time above and beyond the 38 hr week to others ( housewives, mothers, emergency workers, priests, etc ) in an unpaid capacity are also the beneficeries of this day - and that we try to make their load a little lighter if we can :)
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