The many hats supply chain managers must wear these days, combined with the increased focus on the impact of supply chain management, have made the 40-hour work week a long-forgotten reality for many.
Our annual research shows the average supply chain manager must be a master of many disciplines. Transportation is the function most (83%) are involved with but about half also carry warehousing/inventory control, customs, purchasing, and customer service responsibilities. More than a third also tacks on project management, training and development, demand planning and forecasting to their list of responsibilities.
The increase in job responsibilities and the increased focus on the impact of supply chain management, however, have not translated into larger supply chain teams at many companies. As a result, the average supply chain manager is putting in 47 hours a week, a welcome drop from the high average of 50 hours a week of a few years ago but still higher than the average 35- hour work weeks common in many ther sectors. And 12% of supply chain managers are working more than 60 hours in a typical week.
Should the long hours be a concern? Are we burning people ut? Our research also clearly shows that job satisfaction has been dropping consistently in recent years, despite rising incomes.
As I wrote in last month's column, I don't personally believe that having lots of responsibility and working long hours are direct contributors to negative job satisfaction. I know many people with lots of responsibility who work long hours and love what they do. But what does concern me is that workload can be an issue when people feel they're not given the adequate training and resources to handle their job responsibilities. Reading the many comments we receive back with our Survey of the Logistics Professional every year, I wonder if that's what's at the heart of the dropping job satisfaction levels our survey has also documented the last few years. The lack of training is a common complaint, as is the lack of adequate staffing and resources -complaints that may deepen as we head into more uncertain economic times.
Working long hours while being frustrated about the lack of adequate training and insufficient staffing and resources to do a good job is also a perfect recipe for job stress and that takes its own, well-documented, toll on employees and employers alike.
Work-related stress has a direct bearing on productivity, according to a new study, recently published in Perspectives on Labour and Income. Workers feeling stressed don't tend to work as hard, take more disability days or are otherwise absent from work more often.
Work stress can be measured by several indicators, one of which is job strain. The study found that men with high-strain jobs were 1.7 times more likely than those with low-strain jobs to report lower work activities due to a long-term health problem. Men with high-strain jobs were also 1.5 times more likely to report having taken at least one disability day during the two weeks prior to the survey. Almost one in five men and women who perceived their regular work days to be stressful took at least one disability day during the two weeks prior to the survey.
The study also looked at various characteristics of people who reported work strain, such as sex, age, income and job-related variables.
It found that more women reported high work strain than men, and that employed women were more likely to report high work stress.
Proportionally, 28% of working women reported having a high-strain job, compared with 20% of men. One-third of women felt quite a bit, or extremely, stressed most days at work, compared with 29% of men.
The study did find that a supportive work environment tended to mitigate job interruptions due to stress, an observation worth remembering as we head into an economic downturn which will leave cash-strapped companies looking to do more with less.