Long hours culture

I am currently working on a project involving a wide cross section of employees. Although their roles, salaries and skills vary considerably, there is a common thread running through my research. Although by no means ubiquitous, there exists in every department, and every role a real long-hours culture. Reasons for this vary. In jobs which are routine, often manual and generally lower responsibility, the reasons tend to be financial. As required by unions, the organisation pays a premium rate for overtime, and some members of staff rely on this as part of their usual wage. Quite apart from Working Time Directive issues (and as long as we retain the opt-out) how do group members feel about this? What can be done to encourage staff to go home on time, and to work only their contracted hours? Short of paying them more, how can we help them to value their time away from work more than the money that overtime brings? In managerial and professional jobs, money tends not to be the motivator for this culture (in fact it is almost a different culture entirely - just with the same result). Much of it seems to be self-imposed, in that employees feel that it is expected of them to start early, stay late and take home work. It is almost a badge of honour. Some blame their workload, and I have no doubt that they at least believe that this is true. I have worked with many an executive who thinks nothing of sitting in front of a computer for 14 hours without a real break. The fact of the matter is that, no matter how focused we believe we are, we simply cannot function at full capacity for that amount of time. Last week I had a fairly lengthy wellness audit report to complete. I took my own advice and left the desk every single hour without fail to walk up to the top of the building and back down again. It cost me a couple of minutes each hour, but I really believe it helped me to give 100% (and it helped to get in my daily steps!). I finished the report before I expected to and had fewer errors in proof-reading. My question to group members is this. Do you believe that a long-hours culture is ultimately damaging to a business? If so, what steps can you take to reverse this trend and how important is this?