The Culture of Overwork Takes a Toll on Everyone (Quick Study)

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1:21The problem with work-family accommodations in a context, in a culture of overwork, is that people who take them are seen as uncommitted and their careers are derailed. It's like, well, if I want to work here and be successful, I'm going to have to give up that part of my life. I'm going to only have work. I'm not going to have love. And so we end up with these kinds of cultures of overwork that have all sorts of negative implications, among them that it's really hard for women to advance in them.

2:07Everybody has the same explanation for why women aren't advancing. This work requires 24-7 availability. Women are not able to meet that requirement because of, you know, when they have children, they're devoted to their children and that's why they haven't advanced. The narrative is it's a problem women have, not men. Men are the workers, men go to work, and women stay home with the kids. In fact, what we saw for both men and women is a real wish to be at work and to fulfill their work ambitions and a real wish to have a personal life, whether it's with kids or community or spouses, partners.

2:58Everybody was feeling the tension of having to go to one side or the other in a context that basically says, if you're going to work here and you're going to be successful, you need to be available 24-7. Women are going against the cultural grain. Men are going with it. And they're both paying a price.

3:20I think the culture of overwork is a good, pithy way to describe it because it is a culture and it is overwork. This is, I think, particularly true in professional service firms. Very often you'll hear, well, you know, the client, you have to be at the beck and call of the client. And so that could be who knows where the client is in the world or, you know, and that's what forces the tension. I think I've studied enough professional service firms to be able to say that that imperative is a myth. I'm not saying people don't need to work hard. I'm not saying that there aren't sometimes points when you might have to pull an all-nighter and, you know, spend a weekend at the office, whatever.

4:04But this kind of constant, relentless, 24-7 availability is really fabricated for other purposes.

4:16It's really serving this other function of, you know, allowing among a group of highly ambitious, competitive people to stand out as the superstar. So we heard stories of consultants saying, you know, we put together these 100 slide decks and we've spent the entire weekend perfecting them. I mean, a hundred slides, like a client does not want a hundred slides. So why do we do it? We do it because it's our opportunity to prove how smart we are, how smart and analytical we are. It has nothing to do with what the client needs. It has nothing to do with maintaining the competitiveness of the firm.

4:58And in fact, there's research to suggest that that kind of overwork is actually undermining, ultimately of a firm's competitiveness because it burns people out. There's all sorts of negative repercussions of that kind of requirement. Quite frankly, as an organizational scholar, I'm much more interested in actually what organizations can do about this. If they really are interested in addressing these issues of structural inequality. Say, where in our culture do we see structural inequality getting reproduced? And what are the narratives? What are the kinds of interactions people are having with each other?

5:41What are our policies, our norms? And really taking a look at that, is this really true? Do we really need 24-7 availability? Is it really true that it's only women who are suffering? And do we want to change that?

6:05Thank you.