Micheal Taft sent us in this note on hours worked in the Irish financial sector. The figures speak for themselves.
Along with pay and job security, another big issue for employees is working time. More and more employees want a better work/life balance to provide more time to raise a family, to take up a course, to allow them more time for community activities, to have more time for themselves.
Unfortunately, people in the Irish finance sector work more than most other countries in our EU peer-group and considerably more than the Eurozone average. The following is our estimate based on EU Commission data.
We can see Ireland well up the table. This measures hours ‘actually worked’ – excluding holidays. This is expressed in full-time equivalents to allow for difference is full-time / part-time employment.
In effect, Irish finance employees work two weeks more a year than the average European finance worker.
There is also the issue of how much paid holiday time (including bank holidays) that finance employees receive. Though this data is a bit dated, it shows that in 2012 Eurozone finance employees receive nearly 350 hours per year in paid holidays (hours paid but not actually worked).
In Ireland it was 236 hours – 114 hours per year less. That equates to between two to three weeks less in paid holidays.
So Irish finance employees work longer and receive less paid holiday time compared to other European workers.
It’s time that work/life balance becomes an important issue in Ireland’s financial businesses.