But as careers progress and responsibilities grow, these instances of rest and reflection become increasingly infrequent. Add in a child or two and the care of an aging parent, and downtime can soon become the stuff of nostalgia.

Such a lifestyle has become accepted in our society, but is this norm really normal? With work commitments encroaching on our time, what else is being eroded?

Do Australian professionals have a problem with work-life balance?

Research by Beaton in collaboration with Linda Duxbury, a work-life balance expert, and Beyond Blue has found that Australian professionals are working harder than ever – and it’s not necessarily doing them any good. So how sustainable is our ‘workaholism’?

In this 2008 study, close to 12,000 professionals answered questions relating to work-life balance. The results showed that professionals in Australia are particularly time-poor. On average, they spend 9.5 hours at work each day. A large majority (70%) worked an average 6 hours of unpaid overtime each week.

Nearly half (42%) of respondents cited they felt overloaded within their role – that is, their workload was approaching or had surpassed a level with which they were comfortable. Not surprisingly, nearly a third (29%) of respondents felt their work was encroaching on their family life.

So why do we do it? Why would we willingly take on more work when we already feel overloaded? Prior research by Linda Duxbury found it was due to:

1. Downsizing
   • ‘Jackson was made redundant, now I have to do his work as well as mine.’
2. Corporate culture
   • ‘If I don’t work harder than the guy next to me, I won’t advance. If he does overtime, I have to do more, because I’m more committed and more loyal.’
3. Increased use of technology
   • ‘If you need me I’ll be contactable on my iPhone/Blackberry/laptop in the hotel lobby/plane/taxi /restaurant.’
4. Global competition
   • ‘It’s always happy hour somewhere in the world, and Johnson & Co. need their report by 9 am GMT + 10:00.’
5. Wanting to do a good job
   • ‘It’s not perfect yet. If I just spend a little more time on it, it’ll be perfect. Then I can go home.’

What these reasons boil down to are expectations – those of others or of ourselves. Just as opportunities multiply as they are seized, expectations increase as they are met. And to continually meet rising expectations, the relationship between work and life must inevitably be strained. So what effect does this have?

Depressing figures: the impact of work-life imbalance

In 2007, a collaborative study between Beaton and Beyond Blue of over 7,500 professionals in Australia found a significantly higher prevalence of depression within those working in professional service firms as compared to the general population. Lawyers in particular were the most prone to depression and were also more likely to use non-prescription drugs or alcohol to mitigate feelings of sadness.

Such a statistic begs the question of causality: ‘does working in the professions cause depressive symptoms or do the professions attract a typically more morose individual?’ Neither of the above studies intended to answer that question. However, four facts from the work-life study collectively highlight a grave concern for the Australian professional services industry:

1. Those overloaded within their role (49% of Australian professionals) are significantly more likely to express the view that they are not satisfied with their job.
2. Those who feel their work interferes with their family life (29%) are even more likely to be dissatisfied with their job.
3. One in four (25%) miss work due to physical or emotional fatigue.
4. Absenteeism due to physical or emotional fatigue is often a precursor to episodes of burnout.

Is it any surprise lawyers are the most prone to depression, when anecdotally we know they work some of the longest hours in the professions?

The link here is not between depression and hours spent at work per se; rather, it is between depression and a sense of not being in control, something often cited by those experiencing feelings of intense sadness. Growing expectations can make us feel trapped, especially when those expectations are rigidly defined. The work-life study found that, more than anything else, flexibility of work hours and location help Australian professionals balance their lives better. This relatively simple measure may drastically reduce mental health issues, absenteeism and burnout.

So is our ‘workaholism’ sustainable? For the sake of our collective mental health, is it not time to concede that the answer is a clear ‘no’? Surely the question to ask now is ‘how do we change our expectations?’

Phillip Sargeant is an Associate at Beaton, a research and consulting firm that works with professional service firms and has previously collaborated with Beyond Blue.

A study conducted in November 2009 by Beaton Research and Consulting, in conjunction with the Nossal Institute, collected responses from 11,802 individuals working in professional services. These respondents gave their opinions on sustainability reporting and their general beliefs around acting sustainably at work.

Small organisations, defined as those with an annual revenue of less than $1 million, perceived significantly fewer positive aspects of acting sustainably than did middle-sized and large organisations. Small organisations did not believe that acting sustainably benefited their organisation’s reputation in the community, improved employee satisfaction or offered competitive advantage. By comparison, large organisations were much more likely to agree that the benefits of acting sustainably outweigh the costs.

These statistics describe an interesting interplay that appears to be happening within the Australian professional community. Larger organisations, whose actions are scrutinised by a greater number of stakeholders, perceive more risk in not conforming to a growing pressure to act sustainably. By contrast, smaller organisations’ actions go largely unnoticed, meaning that external pressure to conform is virtually zero.

In support of this observation, of the small organisations that had made a formal commitment to sustainability reporting, a significantly larger proportion than the average stated ‘There were no pressures – it was deemed to be the right thing to do by the leadership of the organisation’.

For small organisations, the momentum to act sustainably needs to be internally generated top-down from the leadership of the organisation. That momentum can be hard to create, particularly considering the reasons given by small organisations for not engaging in sustainability initiatives. When asked why an organisation had not engaged in sustainability reporting, the two most common reasons given by small organisations were:

1. It is not relevant to us (e.g. we are too small, we do not have a significant environmental impact)

2. It would be too expensive for us (e.g. in terms of time and resources required).

Small organisations’ resistance to acting sustainably is a problem, because Australia’s economy is made up of a long tail of small businesses. A report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2001 found that of the 6.9 million employed in the non-agricultural private sector, 2.5 million (36%) were employed by small business that employed fewer than 20 people. Effectively this means that a large portion of the Australian economy is distanced from any perceived responsibility to act sustainably, due to feeling as though their environmental impact is too small or the costs of doing so are too great. However, when you multiply only a little bit of resource and energy wastage across approximately 125,000 small businesses in Australia, suddenly that wastage becomes a lot more significant.

The good news is that there are things small organisations can do that won’t hurt their back pocket, and in many cases may even save them money.

1. Track and reduce paper usage – print only when absolutely necessary and always double-sided
2. Submit pay slips electronically
3. Offer salary sacrifice for public transport to encourage employees not to drive to work
4. Replace energy-wasting light bulbs with energy-efficient ones
5. Invest in teleconference technology to reduce the need to travel to meetings
6. Switch to GreenPower (visit www.choosegreenpower.com.au to find out more)

A real benefit of acting sustainably within a small organisation is that it can be a creative exercise involving everyone in the business. So if you or others in your workplace have come up with creative ideas for reducing resource use, I welcome you to share them in the comments section below.

Phillip Sargeant is an Associate at Beaton Research and Consulting. He is a strong advocate of research and its ability to be a catalyst for change.