Key question
How can working hours remain healthy and fair?
Deadlines, presentations and client requests can sometimes lead to long days in design. Occasional peak periods are part and parcel of the job. Crucially, they must remain the exception and be balanced out, as rest is the foundation of great ideas.
Learning objective: You know your rights regarding working hours, recognise patterns early on, and plan working time with others in a healthy and fair way.
Good work needs well-rested minds.
9.1 / Identifying Causes
Whoever knows the cause will find the solution.
Overtime rarely occurs for just a single reason:
01
Planning
Realistic schedules with built-in buffer.
02
Culture
A team culture where finishing on time is the norm.
03
Good enough
Agree in advance when something is finished.
04
Special requests
Openly discuss new requirements, provide quotes, and reschedule (see Chapter 04).
Anyone who knows the causes can tackle them in a targeted way, whether alone or as part of a team.
Solve root causes instead of dragging out the hours.
9.2 / Your Rights
Employment law protects your time.
In Switzerland, the Labour Code regulates, among other things, maximum working hours, breaks and rest periods. For office workers, the maximum weekly working hours are generally 45 hours. Hours worked beyond the contractually agreed workload are considered overtime; under the Swiss Code of Obligations, they are typically compensated with time off in lieu or paid at a 25% premium, unless agreed otherwise in writing.
Record your working hours and address overtime early. If you have any questions, professional associations, trade unions, or the cantonal labour inspectorate can help. This information has been simplified for teaching purposes; the law and the employment contract are authoritative.
What is recorded can be offset.
9.3 / Good planning together
Boundaries are part of good collaboration.
Healthy working hours are a team effort: realistic schedules, clear priorities, distributed peak workloads, and the flexibility to renegotiate deadlines.
Short, honest feedback is helpful, such as: "I can get this done by Friday if we push the social media images back to next week." This keeps the decision transparent and ensures no one has to bear the burden alone.
An honest 'this is how it works' is better than a silent 'somehow'.
Exercise
Understanding my working hours
Task: Record your working hours for two weeks.
STEP 1
Record start, finish and break times daily.
STEP 2
Highlight days with overtime and their reason.
STEP 3
Check the week with the tool.
STEP 4
Formulate an action and test it for a week.
Evaluation: Which cause of overtime can you influence yourself?