Britain’s office workers are spending more hours than ever at work with one in ten having SLEPT overnight at their desks during the past year – a new survey has revealed.

The poll, run by officebroker.com , market leaders in helping businesses find office space, also found that an alarming 4% of employees were working seven days a week.

It’s thought company cost-cutting has resulted in an extra burden being placed on workers with nearly three quarters of those polled stating their workload had increased during the last twelve months.

Contracted working hours were also in the spotlight with 60% of respondents stating they commenced work before their official start time. More than two thirds of those polled regularly worked through their lunch break, with 56% admitting to frequently leaving the office later than agreed.

And for many workers leaving the office didn’t signal the end of the working day with 45% of those polled stating they regularly took work home to complete in the evenings which they haven’t found time to look at during ‘normal’ working hours.

The poll also revealed that staff members were not being fairly rewarded for taking on extra duties, with 58% stating that their pay had stayed the same or decreased during the last 12 months.

Many firms are relying on their staff to do unpaid overtime, with 14% of those polled admitting to working more than 50 hours per week with one in eight workers spending between six to ten additional hours a week in the office when compared to two years ago.

In addition to the ten per cent of workers who admitted to having slept in the office, more than a third of workers admitted to having left the office after 8pm with a further ten per cent stating they called it a day between midnight and 3am during the last year.

Jim Venables, from officebroker.com, says the findings highlight a growing trend amongst UK employers.

He said: “What is clear from our research is that people are working longer than before, cramming in every spare second they can get to plough on with tasks.

“The fact that one in ten workers has slept overnight in the office is staggering and really shows that for many people a healthy work-life balance is far from a reality.

“Many employers would argue that taking on extra work for extra money is a fair trade and few would disagree, however more than half of those polled said they hadn’t received any pay increase for extra work taken on in the past year.”

He concluded: “Hopefully as the economy continues its slow recovery workers will be placed under less demanding schedules.”

Today I have finally managed to book my flight home, which will mean the end of 3 weeks of joining the throng of commuters each morning heading for the city.

Don’t get me wrong I did enjoy the novelty of it, certainly for the first week and amazingly the weather was better here than Granada!

As the weeks drew on I soon realised I was not getting as much work done and it really put into perspective the comments that I usually get, such as; “how lucky you are” or “I wouldn’t have the discipline to work from home” Which really means they think I have a cushy number and if they were at home they wouldn’t do anything. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

What became evident very quickly is I actually achieve less by going to an office. The day is continually disrupted by handling phone calls for other workers, chatting to co workers about the football or corrie and all this disrupts your train of thought and makes writing of this post take at least 3 times longer to put together.

Come 5.30pm we leave and get on with our social life, which I have to say I enjoy, it is a moment to switch off. In many ways these are the things that I miss that interaction with other people. The winner of course is the boss; he does get a lot of hours for his bucks!

Saying all that I prefer to work from home, it is the flexibility you have to get things done, particularly as ones creativity doesn’t always fall between 9am and 5.30.

You do have to be very careful when working from home, because it is too easy to sit in front of the computer from 7am to midnight and that of course is not healthy and you do need to physically get up and get away, by Friday I am craving to get out.

The biggest negative for me is that if you are not careful you can be the employee who often gets missed, for functions and more importantly promotion, so it is important to keep the communication lines open particularly with the boss.

Now my flight is booked I will be glad to get home to be with my family and to stop spending £10 per day just for the privilege of going to the office. I miss my daughter coming home from school, demanding a hug, before she gets on with her homework, which makes it all worth while.

Yes I have moved on from Arithon, that’s in case you didn’t pick up the news via twitter or Linkedin that I have joined Rocket Software.

I have to admit it was not an easy thing to do after 4 years of service and particularly as it was Arithon, that gave me the opportunity to move into a completely new industry.

The only frustrating thing is I would have loved to have been an active candidate and announced to the world that I was looking for a job, thereby giving me the opportunity to test out the many social networking systems for job hunting and report back which was the best. There in lies the problem, because if I had announced I was looking then everyone would have know, even the Boss!

I cannot say I didn’t find this role without the help of social networking, because just in case you didn’t know social networking can occur without the use of the web. I was in fact introduced to Rocket the old fashioned way, word of mouth!

No recruitment agency, no advert applied for, in fact no cv was sent either, mind you I am a bit of an open book on the internet

I am looking forward to working with them and at a later stage I will go into more detail about their offering, but fortunately as Rocket Software is aimed specifically at the temp recruitment business I will not alienate Arithon, which is something I would not want to do of course.

So pardon the pun, onwards and upwards or should it be, to boldly go where no man has gone before!!

Well another year has gone, which for the Recruitment industry has been particularly tough and I am sure we are hopping for a more prosperous 2010.

For me the year has been mixed with many highs, but loosing my father to cancer will of course be the lowest point.

So what happened during the year for me and recruitment views, well it all started with my first guest speaking role in Ireland for the National Recruitment Federation, which after my most controversial post for the year meant another opportunity as a guest speak at the Guardian, fame was beginning to grow…well that was until I was targeted from America, as public enemy No 1

I suppose one of the biggest changes of the year has been the Twitter phenomenon, which I reluctantly took up only to realise how handy a tool it was, don’t they say “never say never”.

But I think one of the highlights of the year was meeting up with Peter Gold and Andy Hedworth, two of the most influential recruitment bloggers in the UK.

So what is planned for 2010, well I have a couple of things one of which is probably a …… I think I will announce in the New Year, just in case it al goes belly up! Secondly I really need to get back to regular posting.

But in the meantime I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a profitable New Year and as you try to get to work this morning wondering what has happened to this global warming, then maybe you should read this on global cooling by James Delingpole of the Telegraph.

Talk about exasperated, I cannot believe I had to look into Recruitment Views again, as it was crashing virtually every time I went into the admin section of WordPress.

It is a sure sign my site was hacked again, so I had no choice but to completely wipe it from the server and delete the database, no fun whatsoever!

All passwords are changed and I did a quick check with Googlebot to see if it can see any more references to p**n, and at the moment it appears to have vanished.

With that finally out of the way I could not help but reflect on the time I have managed to waste trying to rid Recruitment Views of its infection, not just in productivity but also the amount of quality time I did not spend with the family. Although my wife is convinced I am in love with the computer, I would have much preferred to have sat on the couch watching Emmerdale Farm with her, than at the computer all night

Also surely these Hackers could be employed, instead of giving us grief. They are obviously talented or has the crisis just meant they needed to generate more income, so some bright spark sets off a virus to earn a few extra quid over Christmas or am I just a cynic!

Well  just maybe I can now get on with doing the job rather than fire fighting, but one thing is for sure these IT bods will be constantly in employment, until someone finds a way to stop computers crashing and viruses spreading, hmm and pigs might fly.

To be honest the UK recruitment bloggers I know are a great bunch, always willing to help each other. So as Louise launches her UK Blogger of the year, the fighting gloves come off to win this converted accolade.

But before I cast my vote I thought I would check out my own blogroll, to see who is missing and although I do not want to include more to the list and thereby limiting my chances I certainly feel that some of the below are worthy of your vote. A few of which may be under the radar as they focus on their own recruitment sector, which in my humble opinion is what a recruitment blog is all about, well that is if you are still a recruiter of course!

So just a few more to consider are as follows:

careerplayer All about careers and videos
hjafands plain and not the best design, but functional updated regularly and includes their latest vacancies, making sure they get found on Google of course. Mike if you need your blog updating let me know
freshminds talent excellent site well structured and well written
legal recruitment an excellent blog, often gets missed as it is aimed at the legal profession
Mr Resourceful written by Nic Tomlinson of HTS Specialist Recruiters, sorry Nic just noticed you moved your blog, Oh a link to your own company would be a good idea!
Prefio Aimed solely to the property market, although I find it a little confusing in its layout, not very blog looking if you get my meaning
View from a Hill Sue Hill’s recruitment blog, again well written but I am surprised she has no link going from her blog to her website, missed opportunities!
TFPL recruitment blog Recruit in Knowledge and Information, says it all really
The Blunter Headhunter Now I am surprised this one isn’t on the list, as it is one of the more controversial

And the ones who have seemed to have lost their way

Bornto Advise Not written since july

Tag Recruitment blog An example on how it can go wrong 5 posts then that was it!

But of course if you feel I am still worth a vote then please feel free…

Although I have not written anything for three months it doesn’t necessarily mean I haven’t been keeping an eye on what was going on within Recruitment or at least getting some inspiration for Recruitment Views!

My excuses for not writing has been as a direct result of my father getting cancer and then passing away within these 3 months, so of course the motivation was not quite there. One of my fathers greatest attributes is to think of others more than himself, some of which I have inherited. I am convinced this is probably why I succeeded at recruitment, because at the end of the day it is about helping the candidate and client achieve their goals.

Recruitment is I feel a great career not only in recruitment, but more often than not it is a lunch pad onto greater things, because of the great variety of skills you gain. The most obvious is to start your own recruitment company from the experience gained such as sales skills, people management and the ability to run a small business, all of which I feel can often create or maybe help those with an entrepreneurial spirit succeed. This could not be better highlighted than a young ex recruiter called Danny Moore.

I met Danny just over a month ago at an Innospace function, which I have to say is one of the best places to start your own business, where you get an office address in the centre of Manchester for just £250 per year, you couldn’t do better! If you then add free training, inspiration from regular speakers and to work in an environment where your rubbing shoulders with other entrepreneurs what more could you want.

Danny after leaving recruitment set up a company called Intafood, a company which sells individual packs of ingredient to make your ideal curry and runs classes to learn how to do Asian cooking.

Although it is still rather early to tell how successful he will be, but one thing is for sure his recruitment training and the environment he is in will ensure his success. What I can say is that having now tried a couple of his curry packs the result was the best curries I have ever made, in fact better than any I have tasted from a restaurant and for that alone he deserves to succeed.

You can read a little more of his story here.

Well its a start, I am sure someone can come up with better for Mike Taylor’s competition of “What do you call three recruitment bloggers?”, as a caption for the phot0 above of Andy Hedworth Myself and Peter Gold (reading left to right) mind you Sara has got me worried with “”Hair today, gone tomorrow” comment.

The photo was taken when by chance, we all happened to appear on Mikes stand at the CIPD conference, mind you I have to say Mike avoided being in the photo shoot, maybe he knew better!

So if you can come up with better and I am sure you can, pop over to Mikes post to “Win a Mystery prize” by adding your caption

OK I have tried and tried to resist using Twitter, so for someone who is supposed to be relatively up to date when it comes to social networking, my arm has finally been twittered, sorry twisted!

You know you have no choice when a Ex employee of mine Nick Langley, pops up on my news reader for recruitment, saying:

“Advance Recruitment Medical Sales Jobs Twitterfeed now Online
WebWire (press release) – Atlanta,GA,USA
Nick Langley, Managing Director of Advance Recruitment, one of the UK’s leading medical sales recruitment agencies comments: “We recognise that people are …”

I wouldn’t mind but he is based in Manchester and secondly Nick, isn’t seen as the most web 2.0 savvy chap in the world, I hope he doesn’t mind me saying that!

So far I have not seen too many using twitter as a way to promote their vacancies and having tested it out, I can now see why Nick has done so. Mind you why anyone would want to know what I am doing every 10 mins of the day, it would be beyond me and on top of that have I the time, probably not.

Then Holly, forwards me a couple of press releases from Recruitment Juice, which are you are open to comment on, says Holly. One is on 10 commandments of Job Hunting Success and the other is Recruitment Juice Canvasses Experts on Candidate Perceptions, which you can download as a PDF, which I thought would be better than reading here.

What did make me laugh is her PS:

Have you given into the Twitter temptation yet? Do let me know as there’s some great recruitment conversations happening these days and an event “tweetup” coming up for the sector on 18th in London you might enjoy!

So OK I will give it a go, and give Andy Headworth something to follow, as my only follower so far, mind you I was impressed with Andy’s 748 followers, a reflection of his quality blogging I am sure.

So here goes my twitter is http://twitter.com/sfsilks

I know I have mentioned it before and so too have a few of my fellow bloggers, how disappointing it is that there are so few recruitment companies that blog given the huge benefits, mind you I am convinced it would highlight the agencies that know nothing about their markets!

So I was pleased to find a recruitment company, which hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream, partly because they are based in Ireland and partly because they are working their market, which at the end of the day is the whole point. The company is Prosperity and they specialise predominantly in the media sector, which I suppose influences the garish pink website!!!

Their blog is a mix of posts which appeal more to marketeers and ad designers, rather than recruitment consultants with posts like the New Porker and Ads of the World, but that is the whole point if you want to show you are an expert in your market then there is no better way to show your passion than with a blog and hence I am happy to award them my Highly Recommended Recruitment blog badge, one of a stream of awards at the moment.

So following from my recent interview with Jonathan Fagan of Ten Percent, I decided to use a similar format to get a feel of how the Prosperity’s blog works for their company, so I contacted Garry Mullan the MD, which incidentally wasn’t difficult as he happened to be a client of Arithon before I joined.

So here goes

Garry judging by the number of posts I assume you blog is important to you?

It is important. To be quite honest, we initiated this blog because we work a lot in the digital recruitment space, and we thought it might give us a bit more kudos. However, we actually quickly started to want to use it, to post items of media or media news that we found interesting. Basically, anything that would grab the office’s attention. We started to feel the need to share these things with our client and candidate bases. We also wanted to broadcast our achievements and initiatives, and we found that the blog has been great for this.

What help do you get with writing your posts and when do you write them?

We don’t get any help from outside of the office. Our consultants are all fairly passionate about their areas, be they design or online marketing, and usually feel inspired to write these posts themselves. We do not write to the blog on a structured basis. Articles are posted randomly, just whenever a relevant topic arises or someone gets inspired. This usually makes for about  4 or 5 blog entries a month.

Since you have started blogging how much business can you attribute to your blog?

We really don’t know. But we do know that it keeps us in the mind of our clients and candidates. We are aware that many of each have subscribed to our RSS feed, and we have also receive positive feedback.

How many visits do you get to your blog and how many subscribers do you have?

We seem to have about 1,000 visitors to our blog each month. This is probably as much as a niche blog within the Irish market would attain.

What blogging platform do you use and why?

WordPress. The simple answer to Why is that this is the one our web developers recommended to us.

How much work do you do on SEO?

We do quite a bit of work on SEO, and in terms of the blog it is actually a sub domain and we do appreciate that it does provide quality links back to the rest of our website.

What mistakes have you made?

We were slow in adopting certain features, like footnote links to each article to blog sharing and social media services, and we missed out on a good seo opportunity by not using tags on all of our earlier postings.

What has been the best experience from the blog?

Well our best experience regarding the whole website is having won the Prestigious Golden Spider award for best recruitment site in Ireland. We feel the blog was a big contributing factor to this.

Why do you keep writing?

Because we enjoy it! And we have a lot to boast about these days, lots of awards!

Where do you get your inspiration from?

From what we do for at least 8 hours a day. We enjoy media, and are motivated to write about it.

Is there any thing else you would like to mention?

We feel the blog has given us a chance to portray more than our image and what we do, it has shown that we are not just a pretty face, that we have a personality also.