The workplace is an intricate web of nuances and attitudes that help play an essential part in our lives and health. For many of us, we spend most of our lives working across various industries that make up the societal framework. In fact, many experts believe we spend around 30 per cent of our lives working, which is a surprising number when we consider around 26 per cent of our life we sleep. Put in layman's terms, we spend more time working than we do resting for work. However, armed with more knowledge than ever before, you would think we would be working on optimising the 'work-life balance; this couldn't be further from the truth.
Asian culture has many names for this problem but perhaps none more famous than the Japanese who call it "karoshi", which in English translates roughly to 'death by overwork.'
The Monday to Friday, nine to five work week is often spoken about as the worker's dream. It's something I have heard not only my generation snicker at, likes it's a distant impossibility, but also the older generations like generation x and baby boomers. I remember being told that I would be working more hours than I was 'supposed to' and encouraged. This brought me back to the fundamental question, why?
Why are we freely accepting to hour longer hours, with greater demands and more stress? Why are we foregoing our lives to work?
Well, truth be told, this isn't a new idea or concept, but it is getting worse. Some studies show an increase of 15% in our working weeks since the 1990s. There are many reasons for the causes of increased mobilisation, including; competitive pressures, Orenstein's "extreme" culture, technology (connectivity, maintenance dependencies), and the sociality of the workplace. All these play a pivotal role in the "karoshi" culture, and while I will agree all of these reasons can be seen as positives, the old adage of everything in moderation rings through.
My interests have always centred around the human aspect to workplace problems and challenges and how behaviour drives culture, culture drives expectation, and expectation becomes dangerous. In this insight, I chose to explore the extreme philosophy of today's workers and corporate pressures and what we can do differently.
The extreme philosophy is best exemplified in sports, with people demanding more out of athletes and sports organisations to toe the line between the possible and impossible. However, this type of attitude isn't reserved for the world of sports; it can be exhibited in our everyday lives, especially in the workplace. The modern professional workplace has become a proving ground for new-age career starters. Many put their lives to the side, sleep behind them and set their sights on pushing themselves in the name of work. Scarily, some industries and cultures are seeing the normalisation of the 60 – 70 hour workweek. What's worse is this normalisation isn't seen as a concern but rather a badge of honour. Ponder this, have you ever been speaking to a colleague. Either you or they have said something along the lines of "last couple of weeks I've been working 60 hours to get this project done", being hit with the reply of "yeah, same here, we were given a 2-week deadline but its easily 4 weeks of the week, but it is what it is". Now think about your contracted hours, all the unclaimed over time, and you start to realise you're being remunerated frightening less than you thought for your contributions.
This leads us into corporate pressures, which as the world shrinks, the expectation grows. As the nature of work changes and supply and demand 'ebbs and flows', companies are caught in overcommitting and over-promising on projects at the cost of their staff. The pressure from companies to stay ahead of their competition and maintain year on year growth has become obsessive. Data is king to many places; statistics and insights govern decision-making. Ultimately, many of the people who build these tools become held accountable to unobtainable metrics they have had a hand in creating. At a base level, people thrive on transactional fairness; intrinsic motivators like trust, loyalty, autonomy and kindness are commodities freely given and taken underpinned by fairness. For many, the 9 – 5 work weeks with the generous salaries coupled with company loyalty and trust was deemed fair. However, as we know through many studies, wage stagnation is highly prevalent. Loyalty seems like a distant memory, with the average employee changing jobs every six and half years. We've seen trust disappear with many financial crises and the subsequent redundancies that follow.
Although the outlook seems bleak, it is quite the opposite, especially in the West and Australia. We can learn from our Asian counterparts, experiencing karoshi at an alarmingly higher rate and buck the trend now. Firstly, open and judgment-free discourse around workplace expectations needs to be had. As a leader, it is your responsibility to get the best out of your team, and this done by promoting positive cultural attitudes and expectations. As an individual, you need to become aware of your limitations, understand when you're tired, over-committed, feeling burnout and approach your leader with these thoughts. Building that trust and autonomy with your staff as a leader is gold to performance. Although you might feel you're taking a step back, you will see a renewed, engaged and happier worker, and that will show in their increased levels of productivity.
The issue may seem trivial to some and non-existent to others, but what spawned my interest and disgust with this attitude is that some news sources reporting that 600,000 workers are dying a year in China from "overwork," and that the same thing is starting to rear its head in the West. Having a career can be and for many is a beautiful part of life; it provides direction and challenges, ignites our passion and can even foster tangible change. I am not suggesting people shouldn't work hard and that ambition shouldn't be a redeeming trait. Still, I think it's time for us to start working together across industries, governments, and regulators to find stable ground about what's expected out of the workers and when enough is enough.
Comments