55% of UK Employees Work Outside Hours Daily — Nearly Double the European Average
The News
Fifty-five per cent of UK employees work outside their normal hours every day, compared to a European average of 29%, according to an Always-On Workforce Report 2026 by MyPerfectCV, surveying 1,500 professionals and published 23 July. Ninety-three per cent work after hours at least occasionally, while 92% say they struggle to mentally switch off during time off — well above the 78% European average. Forty-seven per cent check work messages during annual leave, and 88% feel guilty or anxious requesting leave. Heavy workloads (50%) and management expectations (44%) were the biggest drivers. Ninety-one per cent have worked while sick, including one in three who do so frequently. The findings come as the CIPD continues to back calls for a statutory right to disconnect in the UK.
Why It Matters
The UK's always-on culture isn't a wellbeing initiative problem — it's a workforce planning and staffing problem. When 50% of employees cite heavy workloads and 44% cite management expectations as the reason they can't switch off, the root cause is structural: fewer people doing more work, with technology making them perpetually reachable. For TA leaders, this matters in two ways. First, burnout-driven attrition is a hiring cost you're paying for but probably not attributing correctly. Second, candidates increasingly ask about work-life balance in interviews — and if your managers are modelling always-on behaviour, your employer brand claims about wellbeing are contradicted on day one.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your head of workforce planning: the 55% daily after-hours figure signals a capacity problem, not a behaviour problem. Review whether teams with the highest after-hours activity also have the highest vacancy rates or longest time-to-fill — that's where under-resourcing is driving both burnout and hiring pressure simultaneously. Your employer brand lead: audit what your careers site and job adverts say about work-life balance against what employees actually experience. If there's a gap, candidates will find out — and 88% of your staff feeling guilty about taking leave suggests there is one.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Pull your voluntary turnover data for the past 12 months and cross-reference exit interview reasons mentioning workload, stress, or burnout against the teams where after-hours email activity is highest (if you can access Microsoft Viva or similar analytics). The correlation is your business case for either headcount or process change — not another wellbeing app.
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
If your employee wellbeing budget is larger than your budget for actually reducing workloads, are you treating the symptom because the disease is too expensive to cure?