Journal of Depression and Anxiety
Open Access

Rise of Anxiety Symptoms in Overtime Working Employees

Jiaoyung Yuf^{* *}Correspondence: Jiaoyung Yuf, Department of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham, UK, Email:

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Description

There are several data from earlier studies to highlight the rise of anxiety symptoms in overtime working employees. Overtime is an unavoidable phenomenon in the today’s information age which leads to a high speed work culture and wild competition in the high tech global economy. There are proven data’s of the effect of Work-Time on mental health and Work-Family Conflict among overtime employees, and voluntary overtime mediated the relationships. Based on the time-regulation mechanism and effort-recovery model the effect of Work-Time on mental health and Work-Family Conflict of overtime employees is measured. According to the outcomes control over time-off helps to decreased depression, anxiety, stress and Work-Family Conflict and control over daily working hours can decrease stress and Work-Family Conflict. Control over time-off mainly helps to the female employees. Voluntary overtime helps to mediate relationships between WTC, depression. According to the studies the risk of stress, fatigue, psychological distress, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances and decreasing of cognitive functioning increases because of long working hours. Recovery from work helped to receive more attention, and it is considered essential to maintain healthy and balanced work-life. Extended working hours leads to an incomplete recovery, this can be explained better through this following pathways:

First one is time-based incomplete recovery, where employees enjoy family activities, and personal hobbies and exercise etc. and have less time to take a rest.

Strain-based incomplete recovery. This is the second path way where the quality of recovery reduced due to the extension of strain produced in long working hours. Tiredness prevents the employees to take part in, family matters. Accumulation incomplete recovery leads to farther mental and physical health problems.

Work-Time Control (WTC)

Work Time Control (WTC) is a tool helps employees to reduce work-home interference, fatigue and leads to a healthy work life. WTC is also mention as an important psychosocial tool which may help to moderate the effects of the relationships between overtime and mental health, work-family conflict and job-related outcomes. This become useful to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid work arrangements that follows. As in the past decades the flexibility in the work places has received a greater attention, workers can decide themselves the how, when, and where of their jobs. Job control help to reduce the inimical effect of overtime work on employee’s health and work-life interference and, by doing so it optimize organizational outcomes and thus ‘Temporal flexibility’ has become a popular type of flexibility, like WTC. Work time flexibility can be two types such as company-based and employeeoriented flexibility. Examine WTC is relevant to include the measurements of employees’ need. The need of employers is to extend, modify, or reduce work hours as per the work pressure. The work time flexibility which oriented to employee refers to decision regarding work time autonomy and adjusts the work schedule to meet employee needs. It is recommended WTC should be introduced on an organizational level and to address employees’ need on an individual basis.

In relation to mental health

First, the WTC promotes health, and long hours of psychological distress compared to short overtime work only occur in situations of poor work management, but overtime and psychological distress. There was no significant association between them. Depressive symptoms are significantly reduced with a high degree of control over daily working hours compared to low and medium levels. However, lack of autonomy in determining the duration and location of working hours can increase the risk of sleep disorders for employees. Poor working time management correlates significantly with greater stress. In a series of longitudinal cohort studies, the absence of WTC contributed to an increased risk of health problems, and high work autonomy reduced the negative impact of overtime on sick leave and had a positive impact on improving work-life balance.

Conclusion

This study found that one aspect of the WTC, managing work time-off, was associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and a reduction in WFC. Another aspect, daily time management, was associated with stress and reduced WFC. Compared to managing daily working hours, managing free time had a significant impact on women and white-collar workers who had dependents to care for. In addition, the WTC can promote voluntary overtime, which is less harmful than involuntary overtime. Employees who volunteer to work overtime are more likely to have less mental health problems and WFC. Further research is needed to investigate the WTC process or mechanism. Due to the limitations of cross-sectional studies, with well-designed longitudinal studies to explain the impact of flexible working patterns on worker well-being and WFC, and how to promote voluntary overtime for different workers. Intervention studies are clearly needed along with employment status. Future studies may investigate each WTC sub-dimension in relation to their respective impacts on overtime outcomes. In addition, further research is needed to show whether promoting voluntary overtime reduces adverse effects and how cultural backgrounds affect the behavior of employees during overtime.