The UK’s finance leaders are stressed and overworked, a survey has concluded, with more than half (56%) saying they work at least six extra, non-contracted, hours a month.

The poll of more than 1,000 mid-market finance decision-makers by software firm iplicit found most felt they are over-worked in some capacity.

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A total of 93% said they worked more hours than they were contracted to, and almost a third (32%) claimed these hours racked up to one full extra day a month, unpaid.

Four in five finance leaders (82%) said they felt stressed out at work, with 40% feeling stressed most of the time and 42% feeling stressed often.

A lack of staff resources to meet their organisations’ needs was cited as their top reason for stress (28%). This was followed by managing budget constraints for the wider organisation (27%) and the excessive amount of time it takes to create reports (24%), such as audits or year-end accounts.

Other sources of day-to-day stress included team management (24%), fraud and security threats (19%) and reporting all this upwards to senior leadership or the board (17%).

Olivia McMillan, chief operations officer at iplicit, said it was “concerning” to see high levels of stress affecting UK finance leaders, but that poor technology played a part.

“Our research shows that month-end accounts are taking as long as four weeks for some SMEs, and this is largely down to clunky, outdated tech,” she added.

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