Working to death: The rise of killer jobs

Overwork kills more than 745,000 people a year through strokes and heart attacks, according to a World Health Organization study. Between the years 2000 and 2016, the number of deaths linked to long working hours rose dramatically, with heart disease-related deaths increasing by 42% and stroke-related deaths rising by 19%.

Published in the journal Environment International, researchers reviewed data of individuals working 55 hours or more – what we call long hours working, and the impact of long hours working on health and mortality rates. The study established one simple fact: overwork is the single largest risk factor for occupational disease, accounting for roughly one-third of the burden of work-related disease.

Overwork impacts our health in two key ways. Firstly, it has a negative impact on our biology, due to chronic stress. The second is due to behavioural change – limited sleeping, little exercise, poor diet, and an increase in smoking and drinking, as a response to chronic stress and exhaustion. This article explores three ways in which the cult of the modern workplace is literally killing us. 

The cult of long hours

Miwa Sado, a young journalist who worked for Japan’s state-run broadcaster, spent the summer of 2013 covering two location elections in Tokyo. In the four-week period before the elections, Miwa had worked 159 hours in overtime, often working seven days per week. Within days after the second election, at the age of 31, she was dead. Her body was maxed out. Miwa is one of many; there is the case of Moritz Erhardt, the city intern who also died because of overwork. The list is long. 

While attitudes may be changing, the culture of long working hours in many countries is the default. I’ve seen it in my career. I see many clients across the globe viewing long hours as a badge of honour. Doing an all-nighter in some sectors, such as legal, consulting or financial, can reach hero status. Long hours extend beyond the traditional Monday to Friday, spilling over into the weekend. This is fuelled by the cult of busyness.

Knowledge workers are often more vulnerable to this cult of busyness than other groups. In his book, ‘Slow Productivity’, Cal Newport talks of ‘pseudo-productivity’, the illusion of busyness. This is the opposite of ‘deep work’ and leads to highly unproductive and unhealthy workplaces.

In the absence of an obvious metric, Newport argues, bosses began “using visible activity as a crude proxy for actual productivity”, ultimately encouraging employees to prioritise this performative busywork. This got even worse, the author notes, when computers became a fixture of office life, leading “to more and more of the average [worker’s] day being dedicated to talking about work, as fast and frantically as possible, through incessant electronic messaging”.

Newport eloquently describes the art of performative busyness. Looking busy as status symbol is the new gold standard in many global work environments. As stressed by Lindsay Kohler, the lead behavioural scientist at employee engagement consultancy scarlettabbott, projecting busyness sends a clear signal: leave me alone; I’m important and critical to business success. It’s the psychology of self-protectionism and status management all rolled into one. Burnout is the result.

The cult of technology

The modern workplace is driven by technological advances that drives human connectivity and speed of information flow. However, there is a dark slide to technology. Firstly, it drives the ‘always-on culture’ - the idea that immediate connectivity means instant availability. 

I had coffee with a client of mine, who was the partner of a global law firm. I sat for 15 minutes as she described how she would reach for her mobile phone the moment she woke up. She would be checking emails at 5:30 a.m. as she went to the bathroom. Her work days were structured through a pattern of meetings and email checking until midnight, and then over the weekend, and also when on family vacations. She had no down time. The phone was becoming a drug device – it became a means for her latest dopamine hit. She was drugged up on technological unhappiness. 

According to Marylène Gagné, a professor at the Future of Work Institute at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, technology has worsened the satisfaction of our psychological needs when we work. Her research has stressed that the increase in technology has led to a decrease in human capital skills, simply because technology has overtaken our skills requirements. This impacts key performance factors, such as motivation, engagement and positive team relationships. 

Technology has eliminated the boundaries of work-life balance. A report from The Institute for the Future of Work found that frequent interaction with newer workplace technologies negatively affected quality of life. In a survey by Dojo, 72% of employers admitted to contacting employees out of hours. This always-on culture via technology is stressing us all out. 

Gloria Mark from the University of California at Irving has shown that workers who take a break from the drug of mobile phone usage and email checking are less stressed, more productive and can focus longer on a single task.

Harvard Business School researchers Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter asked a team of consultants from BCG to unplug from technology just once a week. The results suggested enhanced performance and more open communication between colleagues. 

For me, a critical issue with technology is the endless pinging of multiple devices simultaneously – text, phone, WhatsApp, Teams, Slack. The platforms designed to increase productivity and connectivity are, in reality, leading to disconnected, unhappy and unhealthy humans. 

The cult of ‘othering’

Being different has profound negative psychological consequences. As someone who has worked in inclusion management for over 20 years, I cannot stress enough the impact of being and feeling different. It is, without question, one of the most challenging issues of modern life.

Many research studies have highlighted the importance of social connectedness as a trigger for positive health and wellbeing. Our relationships with co-workers, when friendly, stable, and positive, impacts areas such as stress, anxiety and depression. 

Research across five counties (United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States) by the London School of Economics found that: 

• Many individuals from ethnic groups are constantly ‘on guard’ due to experiences of micro-aggressions, bias and overt discrimination.
• Being on high alert adds an ‘emotional tax’ that negatively affects health, wellbeing, and the ability to thrive at work.
• There was little difference between men and women, but marginalised racial and ethnic groups who are LGBTQ+ (74%) and transgender and nonbinary (85%) show significantly higher rates of being on guard against bias.

In my work with many global businesses, I have found that many marginalised groups often (almost daily) experience a profound lack of psychological safety, resulting in the need to cover at work. They often experience isolation or, paradoxically, othering through extreme forms of tokenism. For example, we often see the black person rolled out for a Black History Month talk or the gay person speaking on all matters related to the LGBTQ+ community. This places a burden of representation on individuals. 

Promoting a culture of inclusion and wellness

We at FAIRER Consulting work with organisations to promote wellbeing through inclusion. We have found three significant factors that assist with promoting a culture of inclusion and wellness. These are: 

1. Switch off: Introducing policies and promoting cultural norms that allow colleagues to mentally switch off from work significantly increases wellbeing, resilience, and motivation. Having a ‘no connection’ rule of no emails and text messages after certain hours and over the weekends is the first starting point. Several European countries have introduced laws prohibiting companies from contacting employees after working hours. Virgin UK has implemented a two-hour per week email ban for all senior management, and Volkswagen does not allow sending or receiving emails after an employee’s shift has ended. The impact on women, disabled groups, carers, and others is positively profound.
2. Social connections: A core factor to achieving inclusion is the promotion of corporate cohesion, which is based on research that supports social connectedness and team bonding as a driver for emotional and physical wellbeing. Being connected to others drives a sense of feeling respected and valued. A key element here is employee voice and the reduction on workplace in-group and out-group bias. Facilitating inter-group connections helps to increase psychological safety, while reducing the emotional tax that minoritised groups face.
3. Providing opportunities: Providing good work opportunities and personal growth, specifically for minority groups, through activities such as mentoring and sponsorship, assists with fostering a culture of nurturing. This is often driven by investments in inclusive leadership skills, such as empathy, perspective-taking, insight and promoting team collaboration.  

Promoting a culture of wellbeing through inclusive leadership and inclusion by design principles drives behaviours that reduce feelings of being different. It promotes a sense of belonging, which ultimately increases worker engagement, feelings of self-worth and overall wellbeing. 

For more information, watch our on-demand webinar on managing wellbeing in an always-on world, or download our directory of mental health services.

Alternatively, get in touch with us to book a complimentary one-to-one call.