Worker burnout warnings spread across World Economic Forum

Worker burnout warnings spread across World Economic Forum

www.rawstory.com

Economic turmoil, round-the-clock communication and constant social pressure to succeed have led to a costly increase in stress-related illness and burnout, a panel of experts told a packed session in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

"In the future, the greatest challenge to the global health system will be stress-related diseases," said Heinz Schuepbach, director of the school of applied psychology at the University of Northwestern Switzerland.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Tell us something we don't already know. Sure...now they're worried about worker burnout. It's been around for a couple of decades now, but maybe it's on the rise?. (2005)

On the negative side, the poor insurance companies are having to foot the bill for the stress. Bad news for them.

On the positive side, sales of prescription drugs are up! Good news for the pharmas.

This in addition to many remaining workers having to work doubly hard to pick up the slack is very true, and a contributing factor to all the stress and burnout.

The financial crisis, still a major topic at this year's gathering, has contributed to global stress levels, with employees unwilling to take time off work even when they are ill for fear of being laid off.

"There's a new phenomenon. We've moved from absenteeism to presenteeism. People go to work even though they should stay at home because they are sick,"

They're calling it "global burnout syndrome."

Good that they're discussing it. Shudder-inducing to think what they might do about it...probably nothing.

And the icing on the cake? This comment at the end of the article.

"How the world leaders cope with the stress is beyond me," she said.

Hey, world leaders are people too.

Wanna bet these warnings will more than likely fall on deaf ears, or selective hearing ears that will only look at how to get rid of all these costly stressed out workers? And the meltdowns continue....

www.rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Great post! It's about time the world woke up to the fact that technology has created a high-speed nightmare of information overload and unreasonable work demands on society. People's brains aren't wired to be able to handle the constant streams of data that are thrown at them day-in and day-out.

It's either find a way to automate everything or slow back down to a reasonable pace. Either way,we're all screwed in fashion or another.

reply to post by FlyingJadeDragon

Thanks. The world certainly is moving at warp speed and getting nowhere good fast.

Do you think people might also need to get more assertive and just say no sometimes too? Like when the boss expects you to take the laptop and be available by cell on vacation "in case something comes up?" This can be hard to do when someone is living in fear of losing a job. Then again, does the boss really expect it? How much of this pressure do we really bring upon ourselves? We're indispensable. No one else can do it. We can't not know what's going on. Are we forgetting how to relax?

Explanation: S&F!

Personal Disclosure: For some reason the child inside myself is singing this to me and I think its quite bizzaar and yet also very APT as regards to the threads issue of overworked, understaffed and underpaid!

Row, row, row your boat... Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily... Life is but a dream.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


Heinz Schuepbach = captain hindsight with his amazing hindsight sidekicks shoulda woulda and coulda this has been a problem for years

Worker burn out?

Is this the new politically correct term to define slavery?

Lol! Guess the masters are really peeing in their pants now and are attempting to downplay the issue out of fear of revolt, even terming it as a neurological mental issue. I guess it is indeed a mental issue, if a human willingly offers himself up as a slave instead of using his will and power to stand up to being tyrannised.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


Gotta love it...how they're oh so very concerned now.

Can't fool the stockholders anymore by firing people to make things temporarily look more profitable? Worked your remaining employees to the bone? Quality going down? Costs going up exponentially in your new slave markets? World on the edge of revolution? Ooops...okay...time to worry about "burnout."

Stress gets to you only if you allow it to. I work in the aerospace sector, and the job can become quite intense. However, if I feel things getting too much, I simply take a step back, a deep breath and rethink the situation.
I refuse to let my job rule my life. I make sure that once I am away from my desk, I DO NOT mention work.

I work to live. I do not live to work.

reply to post by TheLoneArcher

Took me a very long time to learn that, and then when I finally did? Caught again in that web of fearing for your job. But it's all good now. Whatever happens...family, life, and health come first.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


You are so right. They will still be around long after you give up work.
When I finally leave this existance, I want to be in the company of the ones I love, not the ones I work for.

Worker burnout syndrome? Are you actualy kidding me? I can understand a steel worker getting arthritis from working long hours in industrial forges, and welders getting similar issues from the constant strain underwhich they operate. I can understand a postman getting osteoporosis from bad posture under the wieght of his heavy bag day in day out, and getting cramped up, mangled feet from the masses of mileage they go through every year, but non physical work shouldnt be able to burn a person out on its own! What kind of pathetic , weak nonsense is that?
Cops getting sick because they have been shot too many times in thier career, ok I see the problem. Carpenters getting RSI from sawing, totaly get it. But clerks just simply having a collapse of thier bodily health through stress? I think we must have forgotten how to raise strong people in this age of central heating and air conditioning. The natural excesses of our planet, extremes of cold and heat, used to empower us by survival of them. We used to have much tougher lives than we do now, and its only in a pampered and soft present day that any one just "burns out" . Back in times of yore, this species was the top predator on the planet, capable to a man of marching for miles and miles a day just in search of lunch, and capable of shoeing horses, weilding swords and using bows to hunt, and to kill his enemies.
What are we capable of now? What inspiration can be drawn from a people so pathetic that mere paperwork can be accused of being responsible for a persons failing health... what the hell happened to us?

reply to post by TrueBrit

It's not clear that they were speaking strictly about any particular type of worker or another. I had assumed it included all workers when I read it. All types of workers (even sex workers) burn out. But you;re right in pointing out that it is vague in the article. This will be something to look for if and when more details come out.

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
reply to post by FlyingJadeDragon

 

Thanks. The world certainly is moving at warp speed and getting nowhere good fast.

Do you think people might also need to get more assertive and just say no sometimes too? Like when the boss expects you to take the laptop and be available by cell on vacation "in case something comes up?" This can be hard to do when someone is living in fear of losing a job. Then again, does the boss really expect it? How much of this pressure do we really bring upon ourselves? We're indispensable. No one else can do it. We can't not know what's going on. Are we forgetting how to relax?

The problem is that laptops,mobile devices and the Internet have filled the down-time vacuum that used to exist and therefore there is no longer any 'excuse' permitted for why you couldn't finish your work. For example,business travelers used to be afforded down-time during flights to meetings and the like.

Now,they're expected to get work done on some already hellish long-haul flight and then submit it from the nearest business center,either in the airport or the hotel when they land, and be able mow down the five-o'clock shadow with their rechargeable shaver while they zip off to meet the client. It's all about saving time in order to beat the competition.

It's a ludicrous world we live in. None of this is founded in reality. The entire cyclical consumption model is based on nothing except chasing bits of worthless paper (now digits in a computer) while slowly killing the entire planet. The funny thing, the faster this insane hamster wheel spins,the faster we move to our certain demise. Hasn't anyone figured that by now?

We developed too fast and wasted too much along the way in name of acquiring crap that doesn't even ultimately serve the common of society or the planet. When you look back on your life in your old age, will your primary memories be of the times you spent with family and friends or the time you spent at work? Think about it...

reply to post by TrueBrit


Although you make a valid point, I think they are referring to mental stress. Many people who work in the private sectors, offices, software houses, and such, are under considerable pressure to constantly perform. They are under connstant survailance and can be fired at whim.

For some, the need to shine at work becomes an obsession. Therefore, I think that they are referring to mental burnout. These people tend to suffer from heart attacks, stokes, and some contract epelepsy (spelling).
Different ailments for a different age.

Well, there has been people like me around for a long time now. My father before me, and his father before him etc etc. Working 6 days a week, 8-12 hours a day, just to make ends meet. We had no choice in the matter, and those of us that went into melt down.... Well we went nuts and this happened:



Those of us lucky not to go bat# crazy just slaved away until we croaked. How is that not slavery? And yay, that is the first youtube vid I ever imbedded successfully.

reply to post by FlyingJadeDragon

Couldn't have said it better. Keep this pace up and burnout almost seems inevitable. Sometimes I think about the days back in college, when they fed us the line about how technology was going to make things better for the average worker...get us to a four-day work week, more leisure time, things like that. Now we have six-day work weeks and not even 8- but 10- or 12-hour days. Things appear to have gone horribly wrong.

Seems we're either trying to keep pace with the robots that replacing us or using that technology to kill ourselves competing It might sound almost crazy to say, but some days it hardly seems like it's worth the paycheck. But again, despite the pressures (both internal and external) it is ultimately up to us to control our own stress and destinies. No one else is going to do it for us. That's clear.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


The reason I spoke about the issue of those of us who are not in what can be even loosely termed as high impact, tough, physicaly demanding jobs, apparantly included in this, is that I hear about it all the time. Lawyers allowing the miniscule stresses on thier minds (baring in mind thier fiscal capacity to offset stresses with pleasure) to overcome thier bodies, bank clerks just winding down, thier weight and health falling away leaving them quaking husks of thier former selves.
I can understand if these mental collapses were attributed to outside factors, like relationship difficulties, familial issues, or a pre existing mental defect bought on by past trauma, but if this study includes these types of work, then the study seems to me to be completely missing the point. If a person suffering from factors external to thier work , becomes incapable of continuing thier occupation, that should be called clinical depression surely. If the only thing bugging them, is really thier job then they need to man up and thank the Lord they arent living somewhere were life is genuinely hard.
While I accept the importance of monitoring workplace health and well being, and accept that working life is not all fun and games at the soft end, it is none the less extremely weak of people who do not have jobs that can kill them in seconds (Dockers being crushed under containers, builders falling from scaffolds, miners blown up in a methane pocket ignition disaster) allowing thier work to damage them. If this IS what is happening, and factors external to thier working hours, environment and so on are NOT to blame for these burn outs, then the answer is not to give people a study which makes them feel better about it, to coddle them and make excuses for thier weaknesses. The answer is to ensure that the next generation arent such a whining bunch of whimps.
I remember when I was at school, getting on the bus with some kids who went to a different school to me. One of them was upset, really upset by some bullying that had gone on toward him from other students. He was pretty cut up about it. Turned out all that was happening is that he had some bigger kid pull his tie really hard, causing what we used to call a "Boff knot". This is a tie knot, which is so tight, and so solid, that to remove it is some hell of a challenge, and a really well executed boff knot can be nigh on impossible to untie, and will require cutting. I was slightly suprised to see the kid in such a state, because in my secondary school , most everybody bought knives to school (apart from a small cadre of folks who were there to learn, rather than to dye thier shirts a new and rusty colour), and if you didnt know how to block, disarm, and neutralise that sort of bullying behaviour, you wouldnt just be sad, you would be dead. I figured I had it easy, because nearer to London, kids my age were damned well SHOOTING eachother on a weekly basis according to the news, so I got on with life. But this poor privelleged kid on the bus was almost suicidal over his fear of what ammounts to a difficulty with is damned wardrobe! I felt sorry for the guy dont get me wrong, but I was sat there the whole time thinking "man... I wish I had your problems rather than mine!" .
This study makes me feel the same way. I go to work every day around high speed metal cutting devices, I get shards of metal flying past and into my face most days of the week, I use tools, use my body strength, and cart masses of metal crap from tools to stock around my shop day after day , week after week, month after month. I know people who have cushy little telephony jobs who get paid better than me, get more holiday , and complain about how tired they are, how they need a holiday, how the stress gets to them. Its weakness that I feel is causing this problem. Life seems too damned easy when people can burn out at a desk, rather than say, at a fire station or at a wood yard.

Looks like the US of A and the rest of the like minded western world have a much more stressfull problem then employment stress.
unemployment stress.

When the daily Egyptian and Afgani and Iraqi stresses sets in on the average westerner....

burnout is a good prelude to manipulation.....or elimination.
If they are putting nets around buildings to prevent worker suicide, then the people who manufacture for walmart and to promote the western style of living are in environments which are not much different then the other "work camps" of the past and fema camps of the future..

reply to post by TrueBrit

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, which I can understand and relate to quite well. Having done both types of work (many on both sides of the fence, both the more sedentary and the more physical), I can go either way. Both have their sets of stressors. There are days that I am chained to a desk that I long to be on my feet again rounding up horses. And there were days when I was brushing down horses that I longed to be inside behind a desk with the AC blowing all around me. Works both ways, I reckon. But I will say I found it easier to leave work at work with the more physical jobs. Logical, I suppose...hard to get a horse in the house

reply to post by Danbones

Yep. You have your working stressed...and your non-working stressed. Mix them all together and you have a recipe for disaster. I do shudder to think what "they" are going to come up with for this.