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November 04, 2025 - After one year in her new job, Sarah, a middle manager at a large London corporation, calculated she’d not been paid for what was almost two weeks of overtime. In the end, though, she didn’t think this was unusual.
Despite global efforts to encourage workers to disconnect from work, new research finds that the average British employee works 18 additional days in unpaid overtime every year. The issue affects workers across the board, although middle managers and top-level executives put in the most unpaid hours. The study also found that individuals working from home tend to put in more hours than those who alternate between home and the office, or those who work solely at a designated workplace.
“In professional services, working beyond normal hours has always been the norm,” says Grant Duncan, senior client partner and sector lead for Korn Ferry’s Consumer practice. However, he doesn’t necessarily think it’s a good practice to promote. “But being seen as happy to ‘go over and above’ has been the reality of climbing the middle-management ladder,” he says. In parts of the banking sector, as well as in other prestigious corporations, it’s historically been common to work far more than a typical 40-hour week, experts say.
Britain is also quite different from many other countries when it comes to work hours, says Matthew Atkinson, Korn Ferry’s senior client partner for the Assessment and Succession practice in UK and Ireland. “Many nations have a right for employees to disconnect from work,” he says. “The UK is truly unusual: We don’t disconnect.”
At the same time, disconnecting is getting harder in the age of AI. With the technology replacing more jobs, those who remain have more to do. They’ve also been given the message that their job is worth keeping, even if that means doing a few extra hours.
Still, experts continue to warn that the extra work can cause burnout, as it often did during COVID. Taken to an extreme, too much work can be harmful to mental health, not to mention unsustainable. What is needed is boundaries, says Drew Hill, a senior client partner for Korn Ferry based in the Firm’s London office. “I won’t do anything before 8 AM, and people know it, because I put it on my calendar,” he says. He also puts social events and exercise times on the calendar. “I do that so junior staff understand that they should be doing that too,” he says.
Atkinson says extra work can be fine, as long as it’s an employee’s choice. “If they feel they must, that is not good,” he says. “But things work best when employees are trusted to decide for themselves."
Action by leaders plays a crucial part in the problem of overwork, as well as its solution, Duncan says, adding that any leader who grew up in an overdelivery culture bears blame for modelling unhealthy norms. While some leaders may see unpaid overtime as a badge of commitment. Duncan says it’s a potential warning of impending burnout. “A duty of leadership is to manage not just performance, but also well-being,” he says.
www.kornferry.com
Despite global efforts to encourage workers to disconnect from work, new research finds that the average British employee works 18 additional days in unpaid overtime every year. The issue affects workers across the board, although middle managers and top-level executives put in the most unpaid hours. The study also found that individuals working from home tend to put in more hours than those who alternate between home and the office, or those who work solely at a designated workplace.
“In professional services, working beyond normal hours has always been the norm,” says Grant Duncan, senior client partner and sector lead for Korn Ferry’s Consumer practice. However, he doesn’t necessarily think it’s a good practice to promote. “But being seen as happy to ‘go over and above’ has been the reality of climbing the middle-management ladder,” he says. In parts of the banking sector, as well as in other prestigious corporations, it’s historically been common to work far more than a typical 40-hour week, experts say.
Britain is also quite different from many other countries when it comes to work hours, says Matthew Atkinson, Korn Ferry’s senior client partner for the Assessment and Succession practice in UK and Ireland. “Many nations have a right for employees to disconnect from work,” he says. “The UK is truly unusual: We don’t disconnect.”
At the same time, disconnecting is getting harder in the age of AI. With the technology replacing more jobs, those who remain have more to do. They’ve also been given the message that their job is worth keeping, even if that means doing a few extra hours.
Still, experts continue to warn that the extra work can cause burnout, as it often did during COVID. Taken to an extreme, too much work can be harmful to mental health, not to mention unsustainable. What is needed is boundaries, says Drew Hill, a senior client partner for Korn Ferry based in the Firm’s London office. “I won’t do anything before 8 AM, and people know it, because I put it on my calendar,” he says. He also puts social events and exercise times on the calendar. “I do that so junior staff understand that they should be doing that too,” he says.
Atkinson says extra work can be fine, as long as it’s an employee’s choice. “If they feel they must, that is not good,” he says. “But things work best when employees are trusted to decide for themselves."
Action by leaders plays a crucial part in the problem of overwork, as well as its solution, Duncan says, adding that any leader who grew up in an overdelivery culture bears blame for modelling unhealthy norms. While some leaders may see unpaid overtime as a badge of commitment. Duncan says it’s a potential warning of impending burnout. “A duty of leadership is to manage not just performance, but also well-being,” he says.
18 Days’ Worth of Unpaid Overtime
A study finds that UK employees do the equivalent of 18 days of unpaid overtime every year. Why that has become the norm.
www.kornferry.com
