Kronos Survey Says Workers Are Under Pressure

Published: May 4, 2009

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The economic meltdown got you down? Well, you're in good company, apparently.

Kronos, the privately held application software company that provides various human resources management tools to companies on a wide variety of platforms (including the i platform), and the Workforce Institute, a think tank set up by Kronos in 2006, did a survey of 1,265 full-time and part-time workers between January 30 and February 3 to get a sense of how the economy was affecting their work lives.

As you might expect, employees say they feel more pressure to go to work now than they might when the economy was better, with 30 percent of respondents saying they were more likely to go to work regardless of physical or emotional state or conflicts with other activities. Kronos warns that this can result in what it calls "presenteeism," meaning you show up for work, but you are burned out and the business doesn't necessarily do better. Because of the uncertainty many of people feel in their jobs, moonlighting is also going mainstream, with 49 percent of respondents saying that they are thinking about getting a second job and another 27 percent saying that they either have a second job or are looking for one. And some 45 percent of those surveyed said that at their current jobs, they are willing to take on extra work or extra shifts because they either want to keep their current job or get the money while they can. Of course, nearly a third of those polled said their employers are cutting back on overtime to cut back on payroll expenses.

Perhaps most stressful of all is the fact that some companies have downsized, and the workload doesn't go down, but up, ratcheting up the pressure. Some 33 percent of respondents to the Kronos survey said their companies have cut the payroll in the past year because of the economy, and 29 percent of those polled said their workloads have increased.

RELATED STORIES

Kronos Gives iSeries HR App an HTML Overhaul

Kronos Provides Some Financials for Fiscal Q1

MGM Taps Kronos to Track Casino Workers

Kronos Says Business Is Still Growing, Profits More So

Healthcare Company Adopts Biometric Time and Attendance Terminals

Kronos Unveils i5/OS-Based HR Solution for Casinos

Kronos To Be Taken Private Through a $1.8 Billion Buyout

Sales Up 16 Percent in Q1 as Kronos Launches Wares for Manufacturers

Kronos Buys Two Companies, Warns of Revenue Dip in Q3

Cabela's Expands Use of Kronos iSeries Central

Kronos Expands Further into Gaming with TimeWorks, Compu-Cash Acquisitions

Kronos Tackles Unscheduled Absenteeism with Labor Software

Kronos Welcomed Customer Input for iSeries Central 5

Kronos Buys SimplexGrinnell, Its Largest Competitor

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot