One in three employees say their employers expect or encourage them to perform unpaid work, according to new research. With the Right to Disconnect in full force, how can HR address these findings and contribute to more sustainable work cultures?

Australians are performing almost five extra weeks of unpaid overtime per year, a figure amounting to 10 per cent of total working hours, according to a recent report published by The Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute. 

Now in its 16th year, the research conducted on an annual basis for the centre’s ‘Go Home on Time Day’, found employees worked an average of 3.6 hours of unpaid work per week. Put into perspective, that means for every 10 hours a worker is paid for, they work another hour for free.

At median wage levels, employees are losing $297 a fortnight or around $7700 per year. For the Australian economy, this equates to more than $91 billion of lost income.

Dr Fiona Macdonald, author of the 2024 report and Policy Director of Industrial and Social at the Centre for Future Work, observed this year’s findings were slightly down from last year (5.4 hours) and are actually lower than pre- and post-pandemic years. However, she says this doesn’t negate their cause for concern for employers. 

“You can see how it happens on a day-to-day basis, that people get this little bit of extra work. It’s disturbing when you add it up to what it means over a year.”

Below is a breakdown of the amount of unpaid overtime worked by Australian workers this year alone. 

Similarly to last year, the 2024 data shows that full-time employees reported the highest prevalence of unpaid overtime, with 4.1 hours performed per week, followed by self-employed and part-time employees (3.5 hours and 2.8 hours respectively).

Casual employees also reported working outside their scheduled rosters, working 2.3 hours of unpaid overtime per week.

“Professionals and managerial occupations tend to have more unpaid overtime, and they’re likely to be on salaries where there’s a bit of ambiguity about their working time,” says Dr Macdonald.

“But we saw it amongst lower paid workers and part-time workers as well, suggesting that some of the problems with unpaid overtime are potentially those jobs where your job is a bit too big for the time you are paid for.”

What’s driving unpaid overtime?

The main reasons cited for working outside of usual business hours was having too much work (41 per cent), staff shortages (31 per cent), fewer interruptions outside work hours (24 per cent) and managers’ expectations (21 per cent). 

Interestingly, one in five employees reported that they completed work outside scheduled hours to improve their career progression.

These findings coincide with current economic pressures which have seen employers take on leaner resourcing. An uptick in annual leave balances is another indicator that workloads are not currently structured to accommodate the workforce’s needs.

If employees are exhausted simply trying to keep up with work, Dr Macdonald suggests HR practitioners review their staffing profiles to ensure they are planning for the long-term, as opposed to doing so on a  week-by-week basis. 

She says the key question to ask is, ‘Is it a workplace where people are supported to do their jobs?’ Understanding the specific barriers contributing to unpaid work may involve considerations around job roles and training, such as:

• Are employees properly skilled in order to fulfil their responsibilities?
• Are employees receiving the appropriate training?
• Are employees appropriately matched to the job role?
• Is the current workforce flexible enough to account for illness, leave or other unexpected shortages? 

While this may present differently across industries, employees are also expected to be more adaptive, multi-skilled and flexible, says Dr Macdonald. This “stretching of demands” may increase productivity in some ways, but erode it in others. 

Expectations of unpaid work is the biggest factor

This year, the research team included a question on workplace expectations for the first time, and it revealed a few troubling assumptions for organisations.

More than a third of employees (36%) reported that unpaid overtime was either expected or encouraged in their workplace. Of those who worked overtime, roughly one in four (26 per cent) indicated that this was necessary to meet the expectations of their employer. Only 13 per cent of respondents said unpaid overtime was discouraged.

Millennial and Gen Z employees aged 18-29 and 30-39 were the most likely cohort to be working outside of scheduled hours (both 41 per cent). 

“Often, we think about [unpaid overtime] as being the province of professional and managerial employees. We see that they place those expectations on themselves [as] their jobs are really linked to outcomes and outputs,” says Dr Macdonald.

“It’s interesting to see that it’s expected more broadly than just amongst those workers.”

“We kid ourselves with the idea that we’re the land of the long weekend and that we take it easy and go home on time.” – Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director of Industrial and Social, Centre for Future Work, Australia Institute

For full-time employees, expanding measures to increase discretionary efforts, in many cases accompanied by surveillance technologies, may also be placing pressure on employees to do more with less. This could be having a counterproductive effect on productivity, says Dr Macdonald.

“There’s an expectation, with those metrics available, of: you should be busy every second of the day. And you’re not being productive if you’re not producing something or you’re not being seen to do something.”

Read HRM’s article on how to prevent ‘busy culture’ from harming organisation productivity.

The Right to Disconnect could make a critical difference

What exactly is behind the slight drop in unpaid overtime this year isn’t clear. However, Dr Macdonald speculates that the Right to Disconnect, which came into effect this August for non-small business employers, may have had an indirect impact on shifting our well-established culture of long work hours. 

Last year, data from the OECD highlighted Australia’s poor work-life balance, with 13 per cent of employees working very long hours in paid work (defined as 50 hours or more). This put Australia above the OECD average (10 per cent). 

“We kid ourselves with the idea that we’re the land of the long weekend and that we take it easy and go home on time,” says Dr Macdonald. “We don’t. We actually have a long-hours working culture and I think that needs to change.”

She’s hopeful that the roll out of the Right to Disconnect – which will come into effect for small businesses in August 2025 – will help sustain conversations around healthy work boundaries and lead to cultural change.

As is always best practice, thoughtful consultation with employees around workload management will be critical towards successfully embedding the Right to Disconnect – and this starts with equipping middle managers.

“There’s no system-wide, easy implementation of the Right to Disconnect. But if it’s done very carefully, and if HR practitioners can support line managers to have those conversations, that would go a long way.”

“If there’s consultation, then there’s a better understanding of the key pressure points,” says Dr Macdonald. 

As an example, she cites demonstrating visibility of boundary-setting at the leadership level as one effective way organisations can ensure policies stick, especially as we become so digitally connected. 

“I’ve interviewed CEOs in high-profile companies who worked with executives whose jackets would always be on the back of the chair. Success was about being there, but you shouldn’t have to have a long-hours work culture to have a successful workplace.

“If you’re not paying employees for the time that they’re working, that might increase a company’s individual performance and profits, but it doesn’t increase productivity.”

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