Stanford professor: ‘The workplace is killing people and nobody cares’
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
I would posit that workplace health is like all other longevity studies. The strength and long-term stability of social connections is by far the dominant factor in longevity, health, and life satisfaction. Isolation kills.
In today’s workplace, social connection is anathematic. Teams are physically distributed. Career progress happens only by leaving. Layoffs are preferred to re-tasking. Homophily is discrimination. Talking about your life with coworkers is a liability. Telling a joke or asking someone out on a date can get you fired. Set off the twitter rage machine and not only is your career over, but the company has a PR nightmare. There are no such things as friendships at work.
> Homophily is discrimination
I think you are onto an interesting point here. I do not dispute the importance of diversity/inclusiveness/fairness, but there is an uncomfortable truth that these things directly conflict with the factors that facilitate close bonding in groups. When you force an environment to be absolutely non-exclusive in every possible way, it becomes rather sterile somehow. I don't doubt that the homogeneity of my old company was one of the reasons we were able to become so close. I'm not necessarily suggesting companies should become more exclusionary, just reflecting on the tradeoffs involved.
Why? Because those are involuntary attributes. If ethnic homophily (for example) is a precondition of social connections then you immediately destroy or prevent any existing connections that cross ethnic boundaries. And I should emphasize that there is absolutely no research that homophily along involuntary attributes is necessary for forging social bonds, either at work or in general.
If your idea of workplace homophily is that everyone at work should be just like you, then yes, that is discrimination and it's counterproductive to the idea that people should feel safe and supported at work.
I think it is true that there's less camaraderie among coworkers nowadays compared to a couple decades ago. I personally think it's because of different modes of communication making our immediate surroundings and company more distant by comparison, plus a little of the stress mentioned in this article--if you're anxious about your job, if you have long hours, if you have tons of other comorbid problems, you don't want to see your coworkers at the bar at five thirty. Or seven. Or whenever the hell we get out of work in 2018.
> Maybe it’s because we see the polar bears and the trees and the physical environment as not being agentic, in the sense of not being able to take action to defend themselves. And maybe we see human beings as being more agentic and responsible for their own well-being.
Humans are agentic! That means they can potentially find a different job after being laid off, or move to a different company if they work too many hours. However, this is mostly only a guarantee if they are high demand, and it can still be very stressful to interview.
I think the larger issue is that companies aren’t willing to train older people into learning high demand skills, which means those that are laid off can’t easily recover.
We're in a capital constrained economy. Its simply not an option for most people.
Plus this is hackernews. Does anyone here think software isn't hiring right now?
3.1 percent wage increase in Q3 2018. I see fast food jobs in my city for $13 an hour.
I don't understand this. Aren't there a lot of resources mostly idle, such as billions of dollars of cash balances at large corporations?
Or perhaps it is easier for hedge fund managers and others in FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) to invent and play with various derivative instruments than to do the harder work of investing for a real, tangible return that benefits people, rather than some notional, intangible ledger balance somewhere?
With that in mind:
A labor constrained economy implies that the capital is there to start a new business or venture, but the new business or venture cannot begin because they simply cannot hire the laborers needed to do the job (either through directly hiring, or hiring and then training). All things being equal, two businesses in direct competition, the business that manages to hire the most talent will end up growing most quickly and beat its rival.
A capital constrained economy implies that labor is not a limiting factor to consider when starting your new business or venture, you will be able to find laborers as needed. Your only possible constraint is the amount of capital required to fund said business, or the amount of capital available to you to make it grow more quickly. All things being equal, two businesses in direct competition, the business that manages to get access to the most amount of funding the quickest will end up growing the most quickly, and beat its rival.
By and large, most of the economy exists in the second category.
That said, you're right, there are large amounts of money sitting idle both at large corporations and elsewhere. But what these individuals and organizations are doing is taking advantage of the fact that we are in a capital constrained economy. To say it another way: In an economy where the "only" thing that can prevent a new business from growing large is its availability to capital, then the most powerful actors will be the ones with the most say in how that capital is directed.
We can think of it another way. If we were in a labor constrained economy, VCs as they currently exist would be far less powerful. The organizations with the most power, would be firms that had access to large numbers of skilled and waiting laborers ready to join your organization the moment they are needed.... like a union.
My perception of our time over dinner with him and reading his book “Dying for a Paycheck” left me with the following impressions/perceptions:
We will hopefully see a social/cultural awakening to the toxic threat of workplace stress much as we did with the environmental movement in the 1960’s post “Silent Spring”.
We have made great strides in enhancing water/air/soil quality at local/national levels in the last 50 years so there is precedence for enhancing workplace quality.
Workplace stress “kills”(contributes more to the death of) more people than smoking, obesity, and alcohol abuse, according to Jeff’s research(admittedly, I haven’t dug deep to look at data set or measurement methodology).
I’m an employer, a former early stage Amazon employee, and the chairperson of a large national veteran support charity.
Wearing all 3 “hats” I have seen the negative cost of workplace stress.
I left Amazon due to extreme burnout.
I have provided staff(at great personal cost) unlimited time off benefits during emergencies my peers called ludicrous, but retain
And I have seen 262 veterans suffering the consequences of varying degrees of extreme workplace stress.
I think treating stress as an injury is a very important one for both employees and employers.
I think the future is not about employers handing out free gym membership for physical well-being, but also providing training and support for mental/emotional well being.
Treating stress as akin to a traumatic injury that requires immediate mitigation as well as an ultra local environmental threat akin to breathing dirty air or drinking dirty water is important.
Well worth taking quite seriously, although I am clearly biased.
> Second, there is a tremendous amount of epidemiological literature that suggests that diabetes, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome—and many health-relevant individual behaviors such as overeating and underexercising and drug and alcohol abuse–come from stress.
> And third, there is a large amount of data that suggests the biggest source of stress is the workplace. So that’s how Chapman can stand up and make the statement that CEOs are the cause of the health care crisis: You are the source of stress, stress causes chronic disease, and chronic disease is the biggest component of our ongoing and enormous health care costs.
This only makes sense if overall stress, specifically workplace stress, is going up over time. My general impression is that workplaces today are more pleasant than they have ever been. Managers realized non-monetary benefits are cheaper and often times more effective than purely monetary benefits. This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment.
> Job engagement, according to Gallup, is low. Distrust in management, according to the Edelman trust index, is high. Job satisfaction, according to the Conference Board, is low and has been in continual decline. The gig economy is growing, economic insecurity is growing, and wage growth overall has stagnated.
The evidence is just polls rather than more substantial evidence. Even if they serve as an accurate representation, it may be interpreted in many ways. For instance, my job satisfaction can be low because its a tight labor market and I know I can get more money elsewhere, or my standards evolved. To say that this is evidence that the workplace is "killing people" is a stretch.
> I look out at the workplace and I see stress, layoffs, longer hours, work-family conflict, enormous amounts of economic insecurity
This is just objectively false as layoffs are historically low [0] in the US and working hours are shorter over the last ten years [1] or so. It seems to me the author is being dishonest and trying to reach a preordained conclusion
[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/layoffs-in-us-could-soon-d...
This comment strikes me as possibly true in the tech/startup world, but definitely not true in the vast majority of jobs that people work at like retail/restaurants/other service. While these jobs have existed for forever, I could see them being more stressful these days as competition has forced managers to be more cutthroat with hours and benefits offered, and especially in the bay area where workers can't even afford to live near where they work and must commute an hour to wait tables.
I haven't studied the issue but apparently professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has. You bring up some seemingly valid points and I'm guessing you haven't extensively studied the issue either. It seems reasonable to me to believe that the professor has accounted for these possible objections since they are so obvious. It also appears to me that you are implicitly assuming your work experience is normative. I say this because of your sentence:
This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment.
Most people don't have the ability to work remotely or have flexible working hours.
I don't have reasons to assume the author is being dishonest. Instead of assuming the author is being dishonest it is a more reasonable conclusion that you don't know enough about the issue. Unless the professor is incompetent then the possible objections you've raised are probably easily debunked.
When I encounter a conclusion such as this by an expert and can think of a number of possible objections to the conclusion after a few moments of thought about the issue then I assume I'm the one without the facts.
Last year, 43 percent of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely, according to the survey of more than 15,000 adults.[0]
Not most but I imagine some have the option but choose not to.
I don't know but it seems to me that the professor is bias, as I am, as everyone else is. I don't think "experts" are any more less immune to bias. And the claims he made are demonstrably false, so I'm inclined to believe he's cherry-picking at best and being deliberately dishonest at worst
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-fr...
The Gallup study referenced in the NYT article you cited says:
State of the American Workplace delivers unprecedented analytics and advice on the changing workplace, using data collected from more than 195,600 U.S. employees, more than 31 million respondents, and insight from advising leading Fortune 1000 companies.
What it doesn’t say is that this is a random sample of all employees. Indeed one of the stated purposes of the study is
enable people to work successfully from locations besides the office
I don’t know the percentage of all workers that work in an office but I’m guessing farm laborers, miners, cleaning staff, delivery drivers, retail workers, etc. make up a significant portion of the working population and I gather from Gallup’s writing about its study is that it is focused on big companies with large numbers of office workers.
One must also take into account the Murray-Gellmann Amnesia Effect. A NYT article is not on par with a study by an expert.
Regardless of all this you miss the point of my original response. You’ve come up with possible objections to a study by an expert. Rather than assume you are the one missing information you assume the expert is being deliberately misleading. A reasonable person would not assume this. A reasonable person would assume that the professor, while possibly wrong, still knows more about the issue and use the opportunity to learn more.
The most natural question by you is, “Why does the professor make the conclusion he makes despite these objections?” One answer is bias. Another is because the objections are easily debunked. Which one do you think is more likely?
I don't know why there was no followup or mention of these obvious objections I came up with by thinking about it for a few minutes. But it wasn't. I'm not going to take his claims at face value and it appears he is pushing an agenda through hyperbolic language (e.g. "killing us")
I have no views as such on the study in question. I just know that there is a study by an expert and there are bko’s objections to it. Which one is more believable? I think it is much more likely that you are wrong and he is right.
I’m guessing you haven’t read the professor’s work. The academic work he published and not an article in a magazine. So you don’t know if your objections have been accounted for in his work. You won’t take an expert’s claims at face value and instead trust your judgments on an issue you have no expertise on? This reminds me of Asimov’s famous quote.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/456687-there-is-a-cult-of-i...
Again this is appeal to authority.
I trust the numbers coming out of the Fed that tell me unemployment and working hours are down
Now another expert tells me people are facing crazy hours and layoffs that. So I choose to believe the Fed.
The professor lists a series of things that cause workers stress. Layoffs being one of them. The claim is not that every source of stress is increasing but rather the aggregate level of stress is increasing. It’s clear from the focus of the statistics you cite that you are likely much more uninformed than the professor.
The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources. Part-time workers are covered as well as full-time workers.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6335063/Americas-hi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-p...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/10/30/jobs-62-perc...
I believe that statement is highly biased, unless you are some kind of occupational researcher.
We know that the "gig economy" is growing three times faster than the overall US workforce[1]. Besides the gig economy, at least in the US, median incomes are falling (wrt PPP). Homelessness is on the rise. 65% of americans save nothing.
> This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment.
I don't care to do any quick research, but I very, very much doubt that this is true for the median. Everywhere I go, outside of my tech bubble of drab cubicle office workers with free snacks, work environments appear pretty dismal to me.
[1] https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-america-201... (and apologies for a slideshare link, can't even tell you how much i detest slideshare)
We have forced staff into dark, cramped spaces - Then introduced artificial light (knowing very little about the brain, light, vitamin D, SAD etc.).
Our office space planning has painted us into a corner. It is now hard to reintroduce natural light back into the workplace.
When I want to donate money (I am in a position to do that far more than I do currently), I am left with the insight that actually there is no charity that isn't evil in some way. Examples of evil include very high CEO/upper management salaries, stuff like "fundraisers", performing acts of charity that sound good but actually do nothing (or actively harm), etc.
Every time I come to the conclusion that it's easy to do good, but practically impossible to donate to something good in an effective way. With the way my life has been progressing and how I suspect a lot of people's lives progress as they age (less free time, more relative income) this effectively means that charity stops out of necessity as time goes on. I would love to have a solution to this, as it does bother me.
It's more about the systemic unfairness of investment based income.
If we really want to go next level, maybe we can make sure that that tax cut goes primarily to CEOs, instead of workers, as well.
What does it mean for a tax cut to "go to" one group vs another?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/upshot/tax-ca...
Since, in America, the party that most strongly advocates tax cuts, tends to do so to the benefit of the rich, and at the expense of labor and labor-helping social and enforcement programs, I was trying to make a joke to point out how absurd an argument OP was making.
The way that lowering taxes might help is in ending the massive subsidies the government hands out to various businesses to try and bolster this negative feedback cycle. While I am a strong proponent of a social contract and socialized health care, they are potentially enabling poor working conditions by having the populace pay for the care required as a result of those conditions.
People getting money back from tax filings is an indication of too much tax being taken out of their paychecks. Isn’t it? People pay taxes throughout the year. Once a year, for most people, they formally file their taxes and some get money back.
"Rebates" can exceed your total tax obligations.