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- Josie cox
- BBC
published photo, Getty Images
The epidemic was a golden opportunity to shed the toxic atmosphere in the work culture, but it made a lot of other things worse, so how did it go?
Last July, Mark, who works for a small tech company in east London, emailed his manager to tell him he had contracted the coronavirus. His manager didn’t ask him any questions, but instead expressed sympathy for him, wished him a speedy recovery, and asked him to take time off from work as he wanted to recover.
But Mark, whose title we withheld due to job security concerns, was not infected with the coronavirus in the first place.
In fact, Mark was exhausted and anxious, due to the repercussions of the Corona virus outbreak, besides working 80 hours a week and waiting around the clock for a phone call from work to do extra work, pressures that he can no longer bear.
The 40-year-old was deeply depressed and felt he could be on the verge of severe clinical fatigue.
“At that point, it was a lot easier to say I had the virus,” says Mark, who admits he felt guilty for lying to his boss. “There is a real stigma for people with mental health issues, and a lot of the questions and judgments start. The only good thing about the coronavirus is that everyone accepts it as a reason to be away. of work, feels sorry for you and then moves on. “
And in the early 2020s, as the pandemic began to spread rapidly across the world, almost every industry had to adapt the way they work to the fallout from the pandemic, in many cases overnight.
Management experts believed that the epidemic would have potential positive repercussions, and believed that this period of difficult and coercive experiences would provide a rich and unique opportunity to eliminate some of the most toxic elements in the workplace, such as attendance. formal (i.e., the employee’s presence in the work environment for the longest time (perhaps to appear dedicated to the job, even if nothing is done during those hours), glorify overwork and prohibit employees from speaking out when things are not going well.
But as businesses reopen and explore appropriate ways to operate after the pandemic is over, there is evidence that there is still a long way to go to reverse the negative effects that cause misery and ill health. Mark’s experience is just one striking example.
For many years, it has been widely recognized that many elements of modern workplace culture are bad and even destructive.
published photo, Getty Images
Research shows many of us are spending more hours working remotely during the pandemic
Over the past decades, technology in globally interconnected businesses and industries has introduced a new level of competition and agility, whereby almost anyone can work from anywhere at any time, glorifying hard work and dangerously overtime.
Workaholism has become a sign of laudable ambition and commitment to corporate causes, even when it has become impossible to ignore the adverse health effects of uninterrupted work.
Many consultants, managers and labor experts who had witnessed the evolution of business practices were keenly aware of these damaging changes and wondered how to fix what was wrong. But the rigors of everyday life have not given us much opportunity to reflect and possibly change this situation.
However, when the coronavirus erupted, businesses around the world were forced to stop and take stock again. And while some companies have reorganized the way they operate and make decisions about their workforce, this collective moment of reassessment has been a rare opportunity to heal the more toxic parts of work culture.
But not much has really changed. Despite the vigorous discussions in the workplace, there is ample evidence that the bad and noxious methods that existed before the pandemic have simply been adapted to accommodate remote working, raising fears that even as work is becoming flexible , the toxic culture at work may persist, or even worsen and become widespread.
“At first it looked like the epidemic was going to end the work-to-death mentality,” said Maryam Medin, founder and CEO of the Soke Behavioral Health Clinic in London. home had somehow transformed into “living at work”. People are working more hours than before. “
This is especially evident in the evolution of formal dating, where employees go to work just to show up, despite their illness or fatigue. With a significant portion of the global labor market shifting from the office to a remote location during the pandemic, the nominal presence has shifted to the digital workplace.
published photo, Getty Images
Poor workplace culture during pandemic means workers are spending many more hours at work
Earlier this year, with more companies using monitoring software to ensure employees spend all of their working hours working from home, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky surveyed 2,000 workers. full time in UK. And 25 percent of those polled admitted they work harder lest their bosses think they’re lazy.
This percentage rose to 40% among those who had installed monitoring software on the devices they used at work.
In general, the poor culture of the workplace during the pandemic means that workers are spending significantly more hours at work. A survey conducted at the end of 2020 by human resources consultancy Robert Half showed that 45% of those surveyed were working longer hours during the week than before the pandemic, a trend which experts say is due to flexibility. home work. It has become “too difficult”. separate work and daily life ”.
Moreover, the detrimental effect of this increase in working time is quite clear, as an October 2020 study of over 3,600 UK employees found that work-related stress was the most common cause of work-related problems. mental health to date.
More than a third of those surveyed said symptoms of poor mental health were due to workload, long hours at work and insufficient vacation time. Almost a third of them said their poor mental health was caused by a lack of support in the work they were doing, perhaps an indication that they were unwilling to talk about their struggles.
Now, experts warn that these effects could get worse. “The danger is that as some people continue to work remotely and some of their colleagues return to work from the office, the home worker will feel obligated to demonstrate their commitment on an ongoing basis. , which will lead to They work for longer periods.
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