The value of data is open to interpretation
I received an e-mail this week with the following subject heading: “The laziest employees are from these five local authorities, according to GOV UK.”
The basis for this claim was that employees in the five local authorities singled out in the press release had worked the lowest mean paid overtime hours per person in 2023. Extrapolating from this data, the press release issued by the online calculator tool The Calculator Site, suggested that those authorities were the places where employees were “the least stressed in the UK” and the areas “least likely to suffer from burnout”.
The reason I mention this particular press release is because it makes me feel uneasy and the cause of this unease is the glib way in which we can arrive at particular conclusions based on information (or, more accurately, data) that is available to us more quickly and simply because of technology.
That’s one of the great benefits of technology, of course, the ability to make data far more available more quickly than ever before. As many people have argued before, data is the new oil that fuels the digital age – and it’s in plentiful supply. But just because you have so much of it, doesn’t mean it has any value, or at least not necessarily the value you attach to it. So what you do with the data, how you interpret it and use it is very important. Especially when there is so much of it around, just waiting to be interpreted in whatever way someone feels fit to do.
Take overtime for example. Does the fact someone works very little overtime really mean that they are lazy? A number of caveats spring to mind. For example, what if there’s a culture within the organisation that frowns on people claiming overtime or that just doesn’t allow them to? Employees could be working lots of overtime but because it isn’t recognised as such, it wouldn’t be reflected in any data.
Or what about the possibility that people aren’t working overtime because they don’t need to as they are perfectly capable of doing their job within the defined working hours? Far from being lazy, perhaps they might be very efficient and good at their jobs. Alternatively, maybe they don’t have to do overtime because the organisation they work for has the right number of staff for the work it does and such an efficient set up that it can ensure any work is done within the time assigned to it. Perhaps it isn’t plagued by the sudden re-emergence of tasks that need to be done at the last minute or fixed at short notice because they weren’t done properly the first time around.
The Calculator Site may well be correct to suggest that people working in organisations with the least amount of overtime are “least likely to suffer from burnout” or “the least stressed in the UK”, with the important distinction that the organisation needs to recognise and note overtime. The less hours you work beyond your contracted amount, the happier you will be although, again, there are some people who rely on overtime to make their jobs financially worthwhile.
But you can still be stressed even if you’re only working the hours you’re contracted to work. Stress doesn’t have to be based on the time you spend at work, it could be based on the time that work intrudes on your life when you’re not there. The amount of time you spend thinking about work outside work could be a real cause of stress, especially as it’s your own time. At least overtime is recognised as such and you’re being paid to be stressed, assuming you are stressed. The fact you’re being paid for your overtime – something specifically mentioned in the press release – is important and could possibly reduce the stress you feel about the work. Working extra hours for nothing is potentially much more stressful.
What does this tell us? That technology may well be great at giving us access to data quickly and relatively easily but it can’t do anything for the assumptions we make about that data. And as human beings, we’re very good at making assumptions quickly and relatively easily.
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