TUC research | It's your responsibility to make sure your staff aren't doing unpaid overtime

For a person in a capitalist society, working for the sake of receiving money is a part of what it means to be a human. According to historians, humans started using the equivalent of money around 5000 years ago and began working for money about 3000 years ago.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then. But the concept of performing labour in return for money remains the same. Yet, recent reports suggest that in the UK employees are working well beyond what they’re being paid for. This research from the TUC found that workers put in £26 billion worth of unpaid overtime in the last year.

Unpaid overtime was performed by 3.8 million people in 2023, meaning UK workers worked an average of 7.2 unpaid hours.

UK employees' willingness to do unpaid work hints at many societal issues. Firstly, it suggests that UK workers, for whatever reason, feel as though they must go above and beyond for their employer. This might be due to increased redundancies in tough economic conditions and more competitiveness in the jobs market.