Neil: Thank you. Your letter was like a breath of fresh air, and I couldn't agree more. You get what you pay for in life, and if a company wants x amount of work done, then they should simply pay for it. As you say - they're not a charity - why should they get work done for free? And if they can't afford more staff, then perhaps they need to expand a little more slowly, prioritise work differently, deal with a big-wig's over-sized pay packet, find and fix inefficiencies or perhaps admit that they're a hopeless case and shut up shop for the good of us all.

Any firm where overtime is common-place should take a long hard look at itself, and - as you say, work out whether they are under-staffed (get more staff in - how can this -not- be obvious?), or inefficient (find out where the problem is and get it fixed).

Regular overtime is simply encouraging staff to live unbalanced lives. If you want worn-out, unhappy staff, with the decision making precision of a small child, this -is- absolutely the way to run things. Instead, I rather hope you want to run your company in a sustainable, efficient manner. Heck - you could even think about training your staff (sorry, another topic again...!).

My personal opinion is that a human being is an extremely valuable thing. The degree to which a company serves (yes - serves!) it's staff and it's customers determines it's value. Some companies get this so wrong, that they absolutely deserve to go to the wall, and I sincerely hope they do.