Is it Fine? Report on Well-Being in the Workplace

Cartoon by Artist KC Green

An article published today by Harvard Business Review inspired me to share a piece of my own personal work regarding the current state of work culture. The article, entitled "What Will Work-Life Balance Look Like After the Pandemic?" can be found here.

The following is a report that I wrote as part of a graduate class at the Fletcher School at Tufts. The class was regarding Work and Employment in the 21st Century. I focused on the psychological well-being of employees in the workplace and wanted to share this work with readers who may find it interesting.

If you enjoy this piece of writing, feel free to check out more that I have written on my personal website here.

Enjoy!

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        I became interested in the topic of psychological well-being in the workplace after a negative work experience that I had right out of college. I was working for Amazon as an area manager on the production floor of a fulfillment center. The hours were long, and the expectations of managers were extremely high. I was assigned to work an overnight shift shortly after starting, something I was told never happened to new managers. I went along with the shift change to ‘pay my dues’ with the promise of a move back to day shift soon. I was a 23-year-old single female who had moved to an entirely new city for this job and I worked Wed-Sat nights. When I say nights, I mean that I got into work at 4:30/5 pm and left the building at 5/5:30 am. I was isolated socially due to this schedule, which was the first problem that affected my psychological health. I could deal with this isolation for a period of time, mostly because I didn’t have much time to be social with my current ‘awake’ hours. After some time on this shift, however, my body began to fight back against my attempts to change my circadian rhythm. I had purchased black out curtains and made sure to live my life outside of work staying mostly on the night shift schedule to try to adapt, but other factors made this nearly impossible. Construction was often happening near my apartment right as I got home to go to sleep, and I kept getting sick from lack of sleep. When I brought this issue to my higher ups, they didn’t seem to care and told me to just keep working. Ultimately, I decided that no job was worth sacrificing my health and I put in my two weeks’ notice. I felt like a number to the company, not a person. This feeling inspired me to work to help other employees avoid ever having to experience this during their working lives.

        Work, in the year 2019, looks quite different than it did even eighty years ago. There are many factors that have shifted the employment landscape. Globalization has led to the import of foreign products and services as well as the export of jobs and entire companies. There have been a series of transformative political environments over the past century, with the opening of China in 1979, the fall of the iron curtain, and the political unrest that surrounds our most recent election.  In addition to changes in the political environment, the emergence of technology has allowed for new production tactics and management techniques, such as the digitization of banking and the automation of many manufacturing processes.  Through tech, a novel ‘gig’ economy has also been created, featuring companies like Uber and Lyft that offer employees more control over their schedules.  Even with all of these changes, one thing has remained the same -- people still have to work. In fact, it seems that people are working more and more, without much sign of slowing down.

        The United States currently expects the average employee to work a 47-hour work week, with 4 in 10 actually working upwards of 50 hours a week [15].  Just with these average hours, this is approximately 30% of a 5-day work week.  Numerous employees report increased levels of psychological stress due just to their long working hours, often so much so that it can hinder their individual performance.  If time spent commuting or sleeping is accounted for, with an individual sleeping the recommended 8 hours a night and commuting 30 minutes each way to work, the amount of time spent on work or sleep would amount to around 63% of the total hours each week.  That leaves 47% of the week available, if all an individual does is work and sleep, which isn’t the case for most workers. 

A recent 2017 meta-analysis study aimed to analyze the effectiveness of a stress management intervention in the workplace. This study found that while implementing an intervention to teach employees stress management skills was helpful overall, it did not remove the majority of negative effects that stress had on employees.  An increasing number of women in the workforce, an ageing population, increasing globalization and a decrease in the number of skilled workers have all contributed to increasing pressure on existing employees.  This increased pressure often leads to a larger number of mental psychological health problems such as increased absenteeism, depression and stress.  An employee with a health problem such as these is unable to fully use their specific skills or knowledge and will ultimately reduce the overall competitiveness of their organization [8].

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that an individual gets 150 mins/week of physical activity, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics suggests that individuals cook more meals at home, since this is a more healthful method compared to eating out.  When these are added into the work/time equation, there is not much time left for anything else.  Instead of the stresses endured outside of work from other aspects of life, many workers attribute the majority of their stress to work itself.  One 2004 study of US adults found that 69% of workers felt highly overworked at their jobs, while 78% stated that they often or very often had to work on too many tasks at once [7].  If it is acknowledged that many workers might also have families and the responsibilities that come with them, there are other time commitments to be considered.  Another study found that dual-earner parents didn’t feel like they had enough time with their children, spouses or for themselves and report a very poor status of psychological well-being overall [10].  One 2018 study was the first to attempt to make any link between psychological well-being and the workplace by measuring quality of life (QoL), vitality and purpose in life (PiL) [5].  Vitality is a measure that has been validated to be associated with motivation, presenteeism, absenteeism, health care, and performance at work by a study in 2015 [17].  Yet, this important connection between psychological well-being and work has not been studied often. 

People work an absurd number of hours in their lives, often at many different workplaces. Most of these workplaces don’t normally offer the same benefits for their employees. With the number of hours that people are working increasing, this lack of benefits also leads to stress for employees. These employees feel that they aren’t able to balance work with their lives. If employees could feel more mentally healthy at work, then they would be able to be more productive for their company and happier overall. Employers should care about the health of their employees and want to help them live their lives well. Why, you ask? Because employees that feel taken care of and engaged with are less likely to want to leave an organization and often feel that they even owe it to their employer to put forth their best work in exchange for the flexibility [6].

Flexible working arrangements (FWAs) are just one way in which employers can help their employees balance their personal life with their work life. There are a number of limitations when it comes to assessing the relationship between FWAs and productivity in the workplace. The most significant limitation is that many measures being used in the existing studies are self-reported by the employees. These qualitative measures, while not able to show causality, can still describe the correlations that exist around psychological well-being and the workplace [3]. One additional limitation that is mentioned in much of the literature is the idea that differences within workplace culture might play a role when it comes to FWAs. Some companies have found success with FWAs because they believe that their employees are grown-ups who can get their work done and manage their lives without the company forcing structure on them [2]. Giving employees accountability and ownership has led to higher levels of efficiency and happiness for many. On the other hand, however, other companies look at FWAs, specifically unlimited vacation for example, as a way to reduce their own liability without truly wanting employees to use more vacation than they would normally. This way if employees leave the company, they are not owed anything for their unused vacation time. How the employees view these policies often comes down to how senior leaders and HR enforce it, whether they take unlimited vacation themselves or if there is an unspoken resentment for those who do utilize the FWA [18]. More research is still needed, in the form of large diverse longitudinal studies, to allow a level of generalization to occur that would be recognized by the scientific research community.

          The biggest concept that I take issue with here is something that I define as the “Do/Say” ratio. This is, interestingly enough, a term that I came to learn during my time at Amazon, a place that I believe has one of the worst “Do/Say” ratios that I have encountered. This ratio is defined as the percentage of items that an individual does after they have said that they would do something. As can be imagined, the idea of cooperation is imperative if workplaces are going to move forward in a society where employees have a sense of job security and companies can worry less about retention of top performers. I argue that there has to be a certain level of trust between employer and employee, and that this starts with the “Do/Say” ratio. From my experience, my frustration came from the lack of follow through from my employer. Once I had “paid my dues”, I expected them to make good on their promises to return me to a day shift, so that my health would no longer suffer.

         Next, it is important to discuss the concepts of job quality and job satisfaction. Some researchers claim that job satisfaction isn’t worth studying because it can be negatively correlated with job quality. Other researchers, however, posit that “understanding the channels through which job satisfaction is achieved or not is critically important”. They ask, “Does high reported job satisfaction arise because workers have developed strategies to cope with objectively poor-quality jobs, or does it arise because high reported job satisfaction indicates high job quality?” [2]. These same researchers would argue that job satisfaction is a combination of norms, expectations and job characteristics. While it can logically be expected that high quality jobs would lead to high job satisfaction, it can be seen that the norms and expectations within a workplace can negatively affect this relationship. Workers sometimes express feelings of high job satisfaction even when job quality is low. This can happen for several reasons, one being, the development of emotional connections to their work due to the highly demanding nature of the work [2]. This serves to reduce the cognitive dissonance that individuals can feel if they are completing tasks that are not fulfilling for them. Studies have found that when investigated further, ‘jobs that appear to be of high quality, because of status, wages and skill level, can result in lower levels of job satisfaction because of the social processes in the workplace’ [2]. These studies used in-depth interviews in conjunction with quantitative surveys on job satisfaction. Often, a positive response to a survey question in this study would be later contradicted by that same individual’s negative evaluation of their job. This supports a larger argument that a coalition at MIT presents - that employers should be focusing on creating more quality jobs instead of just increasing the quantity of jobs [1].

        I set out this semester with the plan to conduct focus groups across different technology organizations in the greater Boston area, each with approximately 10-12 participants. These groups were to be carried out at each specific organization, so that the participants didn’t need to travel. An incentive in the form of a $15 gift card was to be offered to recruit participants. During these focus groups, numerous topics were to be touched upon, including: preferences regarding potential flexible working arrangements (FWAs), monetary incentives/disincentives surrounding FWAs, organizational culture, perceptions of employee stress levels and more. These sessions were to be videotaped, and audio recorded. However, the overwhelming response from companies to recruitment was to report that their employees didn’t have enough time to participate. It is important to note that the companies wouldn’t have to do much. They would need to provide a space on-site at their offices for a one-time one-hour period where the primary investigator would hold the focus groups. Other than providing this space, the companies would only need to allow a pre-approved recruitment message to be circulated to their employees. Interested employees would be taking the initiative to reach out to the PI if they wanted to participate in the focus group.

        Due to the lack of cooperation from these tech companies, I took it upon myself to shift the study. Instead of focus groups, I conducted one on one interviews with contacts that I had made at some of the original tech companies. These interviews investigated the perspectives of employees surrounding flexible working arrangements, psychological health and corporate culture. Participants received a $30 gift card incentive for their participation. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed, with any identifiers removed. Individuals were recruited based on their affiliation with technology companies in the greater Boston area and my ability to reach them for consent on their participation.

        Upon completion of the interviews, I reviewed the transcripts and compiled themes that were present among the population. The themes were identified by items such as issue order, time spent on an issue and intensity of expression. Issue order is meant to identify the largest issues present when open-ended questions are asked. Time spent on an issue helps to identify issues that individuals feel very strongly about and spend a large amount of their time discussing. Intensity of expression can refer to participants’ facial reactions or, for phone interviews, their tone and any noticeable emotion in their voices. These themes can then inform further research regarding what it is that employees point to as the sources of their job satisfaction. They may also help implementation and use of FWAs become more feasible for companies.

        While many themes arose from the review of these interviews, I’ll discuss just a few in detail.  Culture, management communication, family responsibilities and professional development were the most popular topics relating to psychological health and work/life balance.  It should also be noted that a few of the interviewees made it clear that there was a difference between themselves and their fellow employees when it comes to use of FWAs.  In relation to culture, it became evident during the interviews that employees do manage their expectations depending on what the societal norms are in their workplace.  One individual stated that there is a cultural norm at their company that causes the employees to feel that if they are not seen in the office working long hours, they will be seen as slacking off.  This, the individual said, could lead to an employee being passed up for promotions due to their seemingly “absent” nature when they took advantage of any FWAs their company might offer.  Another individual, however, mentioned that their company understands that individuals need to take care of other things outside of work, such as doctor’s appointments or childcare.  This individual said that this comes with the caveat of an individual completing their work before taking advantage of any FWAs.  A third individual stated that they didn’t think that they could imagine their company utilizing a 4-day work week, on of the FWAs discussed, because it would be impossible for them to get the same amount of work done that they would in a normal work week.  This speaks to the idea that there is a culture of being overworked or setting standards that are improbable.  This is similar to my own experience at Amazon.  I remember being told that I should come into work expecting to fail multiple times each day because there was no way that I could manage all of the tasks that I would be expected to complete in a day.  Something about this idea of setting individuals up for failure also seemed to resonate with some of the individuals that I interviewed, as many of them agreed that they feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done.  It was common to hear throughout these interviews that there were complaints about the way communication happened from the top down.  One individual stated that their coworkers at the same level had a very open and consistent channel of communication, but that they rarely heard from their higher ups.  This lack of communication was often found to cause employees to have to re-do work due to sudden changes in product plans.  It can be confirmed through these interviews, that employees who are constantly told to re-do and change their work based on decisions that they hear about last minute are incredibly frustrated.  One individual even cited this lack of communication as a reason that they had considered leaving their current company.

          For the purpose of feeling job satisfaction and a sense of having work/life balance, being able to take care of family responsibilities without penalty and having professional development opportunities available to employees seemed to be the biggest motivators.  One individual, who has children, spoke to their ability to leave work early to pick up their child as a large positive aspect of working for their company.  Other individuals without children, specifically those that don’t have many FWAs at their company or feel that they are unable to utilize such arrangements, often mentioned that they had coworkers who they know struggled with balancing a career and the responsibilities of being a parent.  As stated earlier, it was echoed that parents complain about the constraints of work being part of why they don’t get to spend as much time with their children as they would like.  On the other hand, it was more those individuals without children who mentioned professional development as an important aspect of their job satisfaction.  One individual said that they had thought about leaving their company a few times, but each time their boss offered them a training opportunity or a new challenge that would allow them to develop new skills and persuaded them to stay.  Professional development was actually mentioned by almost all of the individuals interviewed and served as a large motivator for many.  A single individual, however, said that they had just reached the top of their job ladder.  This person said that there would be no more room for promotions or much professional development for them unless one of the big wigs in the company left, which they didn’t imagine would happen soon.  This individual did not value professional development as the most important part of their job satisfaction, and instead pointed to their coworkers being great friends of theirs as the number one motivator for staying with the company, despite many negatives that were identified in the interview.  This particular individual would serve as an example of someone who claims that they are satisfied in their job even though there are several factors missing from what one would expect a high-quality job to possess.

One last interesting item that came out of these interviews was the idea of the self vs. others.  About half of the individuals made efforts during the interview to separate themselves from their coworkers in terms of what was normal for them compared to what was normal for others.  One individual went as far as to talk about the expectations that they had set for their direct reports as far as work/life balance without going into much detail about what that individual was doing for themselves on that front.  This individual claimed that they made sure that their direct reports were leaving the office on time, were taking vacation days periodically and were getting their weekly one on one meetings scheduled with them.  The individual, however, failed to elaborate on what they were doing for themselves until they were asked.  It was then revealed that this individual was often at the office much later than they should have been, took very few vacations and spent much of their own time listening to their direct reports complaints without having much of an outlet themselves.  While it is honorable that this person aimed to help their direct reports to maintain a better work/life balance, it seems that this came at the expense of their own personal balance.  This individual admitted that they feel badly about this situation and wish they had more time but would rather take care of their own then allow those direct reports to fall into similar patterns.

So where does this leave the state of things?  It is evident through this research that long hours and hard work aren’t going anywhere.  What does seem to be changing is the awareness of employers of employee needs.  It can be said that the millennial generation offered a push in the direction of more work/life balance by being stubborn on their demands from employment.  Yet even when employers offer options such as FWAs to their employees, there are various obstacles that may stand in the way of those employees’ use of these arrangements.  I would argue that the main obstacle is the overarching cultural norms that exist, specifically the cutthroat competitive nature of many working environments.  This makes it almost impossible for employees to utilize FWAs to take care of family responsibilities or their own personal needs, without sacrificing momentum in their career.  Even though they should be, employers are not highly motivated to change these norms.  With the status quo, they are getting more work out of an employee in a shorter period of time, even if that crunch eventually leads to that employee’s burnout.  Instead, like many researchers have mentioned, there needs to be a shift from this perspective to a focus on creating more quality jobs.  This doesn’t mean jobs that are just masquerading as high quality but are actually fairly low quality upon further investigation, such as an in-depth interview.  Through this process, employers can hire and retain employees who feel cared for and healthy and can ultimately bring that employer better quality work.

To end this report, I’d like to offer some suggestions for employers that have come from my personal research as well as the research of others.  As we’ve discussed, the culture of a workplace plays a large role in the perspectives of employees.  To maintain and attract employees, a company culture must be conducive to open communication.  Upper management and other leaders within a company must practice what they preach.  One 2020 article from Harvard Business Review states that while many leaders may believe they’re putting in the work to build and improve their company culture, employees don’t always agree.  In fact, 45% of employees say that their leadership is very minimally committed to improving company culture.  This inconsistency often leads to voluntary turnover of employees, costing organizations up to two times that employee’s salary [19].  Instead, leaders should put the power in the employees’ hands by asking to hear from them.  Employees should be allowed to speak up when they disagree and not worry about potential repercussions that might come from disagreeing with someone higher up than them.  They should be encouraged to ask to work on projects that they are passionate about and be recognized for their work.  Glassdoor conducted another survey in 2019 that found that employees are now considering company culture more important than salary or compensation when searching for jobs [20].  This trend is partly responsible for the increased focus on workplace culture.  It is up to the leaders of companies to take initiative and insist that changes are made that shift their culture in the right direction.  This will only occur if employee opinion is incorporated into policy decisions.  Employee surveys coupled with in-depth interviews would allow management to tease out what they are doing well and what they need to rethink.  This upfront investment will allow the creation of a culture that will retain existing quality employees and attract more new prospects.  However, before this information can be collected, management must communicate to their employees that they recognize there is room for improvement in their company culture and present concrete steps that they plan to take.  It may be the case that employees need to see some positive changes come into effect before they would openly discuss their opinions on company culture.  Once employees believe that their higher ups truly want to enact change, it is more likely that they will volunteer to participate in the surveys and interviews needed to uncover what needs to be improved.  Change is never easy and there are multiple steps that are required before any level of sustainable change can occur.  But, when done correctly, companies can create a workplace that helps to foster the health and well-being of their employees.  Employees who feel taken care of will have less stress, more productivity and a greater likelihood of staying with that company long-term.

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I'd like to leave you with the FULL version of the cartoon strip seen at the beginning of this post.  Many are unaware that  the two panel strip is not actually the full comic.  The next four panels definitely have the impact of making me say 'WOOF'.

If you're interested in seeing my sources from the report, I've included my works cited list below.

-Vicky
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Works Cited
1. Autor, D. Mindell, D. Reynolds, E. (2019). The Work of the Future: Shaping Technology and Institutions. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2. Brooks, R. (2018). Stop Punching A Clock And Start Engaging – The Ultimate Agency. Employee Benefits and Wellness Excellence Essentials, Employee Benefits and Wellness Excellence Essentials, May 2018.
3. Brown, A., Charlwood, A., & Spencer, D. (2012). Not all that it might seem: Why job satisfaction is worth studying despite it being a poor summary measure of job quality. Work, Employment & Society, 26(6), 1007-1018.
4. Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane Library. Hoboken, N.J.]: Wiley. Web
5. Das, S. K., Mason, S. T., Vail, T. A., Rogers, G. V., Livingston, K. A., Whelan, J. G., … Roberts, S. B. (2018). Effectiveness of an Energy Management Training Course on Employee Well-Being: A Randomized Controlled Trial. American Journal of Health Promotion, 33(1), 118–130.
6. De Menezes, L. M., & Kelliher, C. (2011). Flexible working and performance: A systematic review of the evidence for a business case. International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(4), 452–474. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2011.00301.x
7. Galinsky, E.; Bond, JT.; Kim, SS.; Backon, L.; Brownfield, E.; Sakai, K. Overworked in America: When the way we work becomes too much. New York, NY: Families and Work Institute; 2005.
8. Kröll, C., Doebler, P., & Nüesch, S. (2017). Meta-analytic evidence of the effectiveness of stress management at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(5), 677–693.
9. Moen, P., Kelly, E. L., & Lam, J. (2013). Healthy work revisited: Do changes in time strain predict well-being? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 18(2), 157–172. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031804
10. Nomaguchi KM, Milkie MA, Bianchi SM. Time strains and psychological well-being: Do dual-earner mothers and fathers differ? Journal of Family Issues. 2005; 26:756– 792.10.1177/0192513X05277524
11. O’Shea, D., O’Connell, B. H., & Gallagher, S. (2016). Randomised Controlled Trials in WOHP Interventions: A Review and Guidelines for Use. Applied Psychology, 65(2), 190–222.
12. Reilly, M. C., Gerlier, L., Brabant, Y., & Brown, M. (2008). Validity, reliability, and responsiveness of the work productivity and activity impairment questionnaire in Crohn’s disease. Clinical Therapeutics, 30(2), 393–404.
13. Robertson, I.T., Cooper, C.L., Sarkar, M., & Curran, T. (2015). Resilience training in the workplace from 2003 to 2014: A systematic review. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(3), 533–562.
14. Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being | Wabash National Study. (2018, July 02). Retrieved from https://centerofinquiry.org/uncategorized/ryff-scales-of-psychological-well-being/
15. Saad, L. (2014, August 29). The "40-Hour" Workweek Is Actually Longer -- by Seven Hours. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx
16. Vanderzee, K. I., Sanderman, R., Heyink, J., & de Haes, H. (1996). Psychometric qualities of of the RAND Psychometric Survey 1.0: A multidimensional measure of general health status. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 3(2), 104–122.
17. Van Steenbergen, E., Van Dongen, J. M., Wendel-Vos, G. C. W., Hildebrandt, V. H., & Strijk, J. E. (2016). Insights into the concept of vitality: Associations with participation and societal costs. European Journal of Public Health, 26(2), 354–359.
18. Wilkie, D. (2017). Unlimited Vacation: Is It About Morale or the Bottom Line? HRNews, HRNews, Mar 20, 2017.
19. Baumgartner, N. (2020, April 8). Build a Culture That Aligns with People's Values. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/04/build-a-culture-that-aligns-with-peoples-values?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social
20. New Survey: Company Mission & Culture Matter More Than Compensation - Glassdoor for Employers. (2019, July 11). Retrieved from https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/mission-culture-survey/