People are working harder and longer. Here's how to avoid burning out.
These trends are actually all symptoms of a workforce that is toiling harder and longer and doing more with less, according to Amanda Jones. The senior lecturer in organizational behaviour and HR management at King's Business School at King's College London specializes in remote working and work-life balance.
Jones told Business Insider that "work intensification has been happening for decades. She remembers hearing about it and becoming interested in the concept while she was at school.
When Jones was doing her doctorate, a professor at Cardiff University called Alan Felsted, agreed to be her examiner. He has studied work intensification extensively.
"One of the things that always fascinates me about this is that it's never gone down," Jones said, pointing to Felsted's research. "We are working harder progressively over time."
The end result isn't increased productivity, it's burnout and detachment.
Jones said that quitting as a concept in response to feeling overwhelmed by one's workload is "quite victim-blaming; it could be just that they can't take it anymore."
'Race to the bottom'
The negative impacts of work intensification include burnout and stress, which can lead to people taking long-term sick leave and putting a strain on the economy.
"You've got people who are economically inactive, so they're not paying taxes, they're possibly receiving benefits instead," Jones said.
"It's going to not only cost more, but if we're doing this to people in the skilled section of the workforce, it's also not going to help us with our skills gaps, so productivity will reduce," she added. "It does feel a bit like a race to the bottom."
Some companies are implementing a four-day workweek, which is a step in the right direction, in Jones' view.
All organizations should be aware that "what's happening isn't going to benefit them in the long run," she said. "I think probably there's a policy intervention that's necessary."
Increasingly intense digital world
Researchers have linked work intensification to the pandemic.
The stereotype is that people who work remotely are less productive, stepping away from their computers to do household chores or run errands.
This has factored into the decisions of several prominent companies requiring their staff to return to the office — sometimes up to five days a week.
This is another misconception, though, Jones said, because people who work from home can actually attend more meetings than before.
"It provides you with more opportunity to participate in work," she said.
"If you can't go to a meeting, in the old days, you couldn't go to a meeting, you couldn't physically get there. Now, we can go to everything."
Setting boundaries
Having work at our fingertips — emails and messaging apps on our phones — has caused our professional lives to bleed into our personal ones more than ever.
"People go on holiday and they do all this extra work," Jones said. "It doesn't feel difficult — you've got your phone in your hand and you're able to let go."
Jones said she's taken note of this and now deletes her email and her LinkedIn apps when she goes on vacation.
"There's this whole requirement to build your brand and to constantly be employable and always be looking for work, which adds to the intensification. It's this 'I must always be marketable' culture, which, for younger people, I worry they're going to be burned out before they're 30 at this rate."
Jones also recommends setting boundaries to avoid getting sucked into the work intensification cycle, even if it's difficult to do so.
"If you are in a context where your organization is not supporting that so much, often people don't feel that they have any choice other than to exit or try to retrain or do something else," she said.
Ultimately, people need to be aware of what is and is not acceptable and healthy for them.
"Some people do just have a propensity toward overwork, and we do have a duty of care to make sure that we are not overburdening those kind of people," Jones said.
"But then again, they're exactly the kind of people who tend to get things done. So I think there's that element of having to have self-awareness and knowing how to look after yourself."
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According to a 2020 Pew Research Center Report, millennial women average 2.02 kids. At similar ages, Gen X women had 2.05 kids and boomers 2.07. Pamela Smock, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, said having two kids has been an American ideal since the 1960s. The difference between the generations is that millennials are less likely to have kids than previous generations. In that sense, a young family with two kids is no longer the norm, but, for some, a symbol of luxury. "People see marriage and childbearing as something to do once they feel economically comfortable," Smock said. To many, that means not having any debt and being able to afford a mortgage. The average millennial borrower owes $42,000 in student loan debt, part of why it's so difficult for millennials to buy their first homes. Comparatively, 45% of baby boomers bought their first homes between the ages of 25 and 34. Work has also changed, Smock said. Gone are the lifelong jobs that require a basic college degree. Millennials are known as the " job-hopping generation," which also impacts their sense of security as costs keep rising. Stephanie Fornaro, a 40-year-old mom of two in Dallas, has a 20-year-old daughter in college and a 7-year-old son. She had her daughter when she was 20, but delayed having her son until her early 30s. "Financially, I was in a different season in my life to afford a second child," she said, adding that she divorced a few years after giving birth to her daughter. It was only when she remarried in 2017 that she felt secure enough to have another kid. Wendie N. Choudary, a sociologist and lecturer at Binghamton University, told BI that in addition to rent or housing costs, millennial parents also have to deal with astronomically high childcare costs, paying an annual average of $11,000 per child. Fornaro, who founded and runs a national childcare agency, said a third child would have a huge financial impact on her family. To keep up with her job, she would need a full-time nanny — roughly $80,000 a year in Dallas. Childcare costs are so high that some parents struggle to even have their second child. Katie Waldron, who lives in Long Island, New York, previously told Business Insider that she and her husband want a second child soon, but are considering moving to the UK to be closer to his family and find more affordable childcare services. "The burden of childcare costs and, equally, the lack of emotional support as we go through our parenting journey make it impossible to have another," she said. Millennials are having kids later Economic uncertainty also plays a role in millennials having kids later than past generations, Smock said, thus affecting how many they have. Millennials' median age for first-time parents is 27.3, a significant increase from the 1970s when it was the norm to have kids at 21. Depending on when they start having kids, timing the third can be tricky. More parents are having kids in their 40s, past the fertility peak at 37 years old. Even if the plan is to have more than two kids, it's not necessarily in the parents' control, Smock said. Not everyone can afford IVF, which can cost $12,000 and require six rounds to achieve success. Having kids past 35 also increases the chances of conditions like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, premature birth, or genetic disorders in the fetus. Parents considering a third child in their late 30s or early 40s might not feel the risk is worth it. Sometimes, a rough pregnancy is enough to deter wanting more kids. Lamson, who had her first child at 31 and second at 36, felt a huge difference in those five years. At 31, she said it was easy to stay very active and exercise four times a week. The second time was more challenging. "I had really low energy throughout my entire pregnancy," she said. "I struggled with a lot of pain, so even when I would try to just get out and walk, I could only kind of do so for a period of time before I didn't feel all that well." "I attribute it a lot to age," she said, adding that she ended up going to physical therapy to alleviate some symptoms. With more choice, parents choose fewer kids After World War II, it was normal to get married at 19 and have kids in rapid succession, Smock said. But with more choices, millennials realized "they don't have to follow the path that their parents and grandparents took," she said. In recent years, there's been an increased online interest in " trad wives" and the merits of large families. However, it hasn't shown much of a dent in what most people want, Julia A. Behrman, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University who researches how values shape a person's ideal family size, told BI. "We are pretty consistently seeing these average ideal family sizes of about 2.5," Behrman said. Most actually plan to have fewer: roughly 1.8 on average among people in their 20s and 30s. In Behrman's research, she's found that people with more progressive views on gender norms and household labor tend to want fewer kids — often because they are aware of how childrearing disproportionately falls on mothers. Even if parents want two or more kids, Behrman's research found that it doesn't mean it's their top priority. Other aspects of family life, like financial stability, rank higher. For the parents who can technically swing three kids, it could mean a notable decline in their quality of life. Fornaro, who grew up as one of eight children and felt neglected because her dad and stepmom struggled to raise them all, doesn't want her kids to experience the same. She said having a third wouldn't just impact how much she could contribute to her kids' college tuition or inheritances. It would also change how much time she gets to spend with them. "We are a pretty active family," she said. Traveling and going on their boat would be harder with an infant. Taking her son to his extracurriculars — jujitsu, baseball, and football — would also be much harder with a newborn. And with Fornaro's daughter in college, caring for a baby would make it difficult for Fornaro to visit her. Lamson even felt a big difference in what she could do after having a second kid. She and her husband took their son to Europe when he was 10 months old because he had an easygoing demeanor. "My daughter doesn't have the same personality; she's a little bit more challenging," Lamson said. They've opted for more staycations and plan to travel more when their daughter is older. Having a third child would be financially "really limiting" for vacations, not to mention the logistics of wrangling three kids onto a flight. It's not that millennial parents don't love parenting or a house full of kids. Fornaro fell in love with being a mom after her first child. Lamson wanted a third. They just wanted to give more to their existing family. "I wanted my kids to have my undivided attention," Fornaro said. "I felt like that was one thing that I didn't get out of my parents."
