Nowadays many jobs are more stressful and the working day is longer. What are the reasons for this? What can employers do to help employees?

Surprisingly, the advent of technology did not bring forth an era of relaxation and easy life for common people. Instead, a recent survey has demonstrated that work has become increasingly stressful, and works hours have gone haywire, that the most popular last word is now ' I wish I did not have to work so much'. Stress and longer working hours normally have detrimental effects on employee performance - over-burn and inefficiency. The reasons for these phenomena are thus subjected constant debate. To uplift the productivity of company, employers are seeking to redeem the worsening condition. 

There are two principal reasons that resulted in longer working hours. Firstly, the increased competition from globalisation has droved workers to work harder, as they strive to maintain their value for the company. Every growing desire in materialism is the second reason, in the pursue to fill their greed, some will overestimate, over task themselves with impossible jobs.

In order to combat the increase of the fatigue, employers can enforce merits based rewards and know(understand) their workers well. Performance based rewards will prompt workers to value efficiency rather than raw working hours, thereby counteracting the negative influence. Through the act of knowing the person well, projects and time could be better allocated, leading to better workings environment and steam-lined management.

In a nutshell, competition and pursue of materialism driven jobs to be more stressful and having longer working hours, the negative influences can be counteract by employers through merits based rewards and good communication.