The survey canvassed the views of 3,000 people in four countries – Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore.

In Australia 25 per cent of those surveyed said current working hours were undermining family life ‘a great deal’ or to ‘some extent’. It also found almost 40 per cent of those surveyed were working more than 40 hours per week.

The negative impact on family life increases in line with the length of hours worked. Of people working 31-40 hours per week only 17 per cent claimed that working hours were undermining family life. However this jumped to 28 per cent of people working 41-50 hours and 53 per cent of people working 51-60 hours per week.

The survey highlights the extent to which many employees are working in excess of the standard working week. A total of 41 per cent of respondents indicated that they were working a standard 31-40 hours per week. A further 27 per cent were working 41-50 hours per week, while 10.5 per cent were working more than 50 hours.

A majority (55.5%) said they would ideally like to work 31-40 hours while only 3.9% would like to work more than 50 hours per week.