EP 367 Workplace Pressures Put Employees on Overload

Today’s ways of working are not working–even for professionals in ‘good’ jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 expectations. In their book ‘Overload’, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document, with a study in the IT department of a Fortune 500 company, how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition and under performance. Working on call, as it were, does not insure good results. In fact, the dominance of the immediate, with the constant barrage of texts, e-mails and shadow communications, often elevates trivial matters ahead of consequential ones. ‘Flexible’ work policies and lip service about ‘work-life balance’ don’t come close to solving the problem. On this podcast, MIT professor Kelly explains what can. And, yet, even as the study tries to help design a better approach to a more constructive work environment, the realities of these times intervene in real time. Listen in and find out what we mean.

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