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Recently released and it states what many of us know. A lot of people (workers) experience stress at work and work condition at some (many?) places are not defined as good.
How about you?
Overview
In this timely, provocative book, a Stanford business professor contends that many modern management practices are toxic to employees—hurting engagement, increasing turnover, and destroying their physical and emotional health—and to company performance, as he offers ways to build human sustainability at work.
You don’t have to do a dangerous job—in coal mine or on a construction site, commercial fishing boat, or an oil rig—to endure a health-destroying, possibly life-threatening, workplace. Just ask the manager in a senior finance role whose immense workload, once handled by several employees, required frequent all-nighters—leading to alcohol and drug addiction. Or the dedicated news media producer whose commitment to getting the story resulted in a sixty-pound weight gain thanks to having no down time to eat properly or exercise. Or the marketing professional prescribed antidepressants a week after joining her employer.
These individuals are not exceptions—they are too often the norm. Every industry is filled with similar horror stories, and the costs, to both employees and their companies, is enormous—and worsening. In Dying for a Paycheck, Jeffrey Pfeffer exposes the infuriating truth about modern work life: even as organizations allow management practices that literally sicken and sometimes kill their employees, those policies do not enhance productivity or the bottom line. Instead, they diminish employee engagement, increase turnover, reduce job performance—and drive up health costs.
Exploring a range of important topics, including layoffs, health insurance, work-family conflict, autonomy, and why people remain in toxic environments, Pfeffer offers guidance and practical solutions all of us—employees, employers, and the government—can use to enhance workplace wellbeing. We must wake up to the dangers and costs of today’s workplace, Pfeffer argues. Dying for a Paycheck is a clarion call for a social movement focused on human sustainability. Pfeffer makes clear that the environment we work in is just as important as the one we live in, and with this urgent book, he opens our eyes and shows how we can make our workplaces healthier and better.
Cue the FYJIGM crowd to start chanting that only people too stupid to find other work stay in such jobs, or some such, because they never put up with it, yadda yadda.
I work in IT for a large, recently merged organization employing over 15,000 people. There are multiple, incredibly large initiatives going on concurrently involving IT - patient care, standardized financials and payroll, standardizing PC images, upgrading everything to Windows 10, and tons of things I'm sure I don't know about. The workload was increased by several times compared to before the merger for either individual organization - meanwhile, somewhere between 15%-20% of the IT workforce was laid off last year.
That's meant extremely extended for staff in certain roles virtually all the time, and pretty much everyone pulls 50 or more hours during crunch times. We lost two 20+ year vets in one pay period off of one department citing bad hours and working conditions. First level management is mostly good - directors and above are divorced from the conditions that line analysts/engineers (much less first level management - who have the worst jobs in the company IMO). IT has to take on whatever the business lines want, regardless of whether we have the appropriate personnel, time, or budget to do it. We're expected to turn crap into gold.
My manager is a first level manager and constantly appears on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I've learned to not take work personally. I do the minimums - I realize I'm not going to advance here, but I'm competent enough to not get fired, and if it becomes unbearable, I'll just move. To some extent, I really don't care what happens.
That's the only attitude to have anymore if you're working a routine, corporate job.
The last CPA firm where I worked literally replaced me with two people. Between my work load, helping take care of aging parents, getting my house ready to sell, moving to another state, dealing with an a****** manager, and complications from an antibiotic, by the time I moved, I was completely exhausted. It was three months before I felt like going back to work full-time. I feel very fortunate that I had the option to work part-time.
The last CPA firm where I worked literally replaced me with two people. Between my work load, helping take care of aging parents, getting my house ready to sell, moving to another state, dealing with an a****** manager, and complications from an antibiotic, by the time I moved, I was completely exhausted. It was three months before I felt like going back to work full-time. I feel very fortunate that I had the option to work part-time.
As someone who has worked for 2 different CPA firms I know how stressful working there can be. At my first one I used to feel physically and mentally exhausted after coming home from work every day. I can't even imagine the stress you must have been going through with all those additional issues. Glad that you're finally over that period in your life.
My entire team has had some sort of physical side effects from stress at some point in the past year or so. One has had constant digestion issues. I have had intermittent bouts of High Blood Pressure with dizzy spells (stress test revealed no major issues... yet) and another colleague has had constant infections and autoimmune reactions. All 3 obviously pretty correlated with stress.
I'm doing better in the past 2-3 weeks by adopting an attitude mentioned above. Just going to do my best and if Rome collapses, so be it. We're the last few remaining Spartans in the Coliseum fighting against lions for a slim chance of financial freedom.
I took it down to the basement and tried to take it apart. The best I could find was "F*** You [Something] I Got Mine". Still analyzing the third word.
As far as the OP's question, thanks for the book suggestion -- I'll put it on my reading list. (Not being snarky, I am curious about it).
He references the author's point that you don't have to have a dangerous job and can be stressed by management's actions even in a comfy office. I'd like to point out something I've noticed. In the past I've worked fairly dangerous jobs (construction, pipeline, oil rigs, truck driver, flight instructor). And to be honest, the actions of the prancing little fools above me don't bother me much. I've found I can nearly kill myself at work and get a 2.4% raise, or I can coast and get a 2% raise. Why bother? Again, anecdotally, I've found the other relaxed guys around me have a similar background, usually military. They have the same attitude I have: We view jobs like a cup dispenser -- if you don't like this one, toss it and grab another one out of the stack.
I took it down to the basement and tried to take it apart. The best I could find was "F*** You [Something] I Got Mine". Still analyzing the third word.
Jack
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