I don't think people are more fragile. I think the problem is that we're not including the societal stress alongside the workplace environmental stress.
Whose job is it to take care of societal stress?
Two people can do the exact same job, but maybe one has a less stressful home life, has less physical medical issues, has less mental medical issues, has more support networks generally, has more friends in the workplace, sees more potential for career progression, etc
I agree - but whose job is it? Should the workplace adjust workload because an individual is incapable of managing their personal life? In my line of work, I spend a lot of the time talking about personal life with people, because that is the biggest factor affecting their work life. It isn't the workload.
You eat poorly and you aren't going to be able to physically perform at your peak. Socially and mentally for decades, we have created an environment of terrible nutrition. Should the workplace enforce rules about how much social media a person can consume, how much exercise they need to do, how to manage friend and love relationships? That stress outside of work is self-inflicted.
People talk about work-life balance. It is bullshit, there is no such thing. There is just life.
It's not about fixing societal stress, it's about being aware of it and accommodating that stress.... because if you don't, then you burn out your employees and have to then shell out more money to re-train new resources, and lose all the investment and knowledge.
At the end of the day, it becomes self-selecting... companies that accommodate flexible work schedules, achievable workloads and provide clear career progression will end up with the best people and be more productive... and the companies that see employees as something to be exploited will be less productive.
Companies that can accommodate people going through stressful moments will retain staff for longer - there's a clear profit motive for actually looking after your staff.
There absolutely is work-life balance. If a company expects you to answer calls at all hours and demands you finish an amount of work that takes 120 hours a week, they'll burn everyone out and have to retrain everyone. Workload isn't the only contributor to burnout, but it is a contributing factor. If the company expects that no one answer calls after 5pm or weekends, and provides deadlines that can be achieved with 40-hour work weeks then they'll keep staff for longer.
Of course, there is always the caveat that it all depends on economics... people put up with a lot more abuse when unemployment is high... and companies become very accommodating when unemployment is low.
Who do you think makes the rules at work? Robots? Those people have personal lives outside of work also. They understand life stress, because they also live. The problem for many individuals in the workplace is that they think they are the only individual.
Perhaps you are used to the culture in the US where they just fire people indiscriminately - that is not how it works in Europe. In many cases, the company is stuck with underperformers and are forced to support them, even if their issues are self-inflicted.
Nope. It is still part of life. You can choose to work like that (many do) or choose not to. The choice is yours. I don't know any company that would do that kind of thing though. Not a single one.
But when it comes to workload, who decides what is enough or too much? On a production line it is pretty easy to compare, but for knowledge workers, there can be massive discrepancies in ability, but each individual thinks they are very similar to the person next to them.
And I believe far less contributing than most individuals believes.
Companies are companies, they are always going to look to increase profits by squeezing more work out of less people. However, people seem to use this as the rule as to why they can't cope, even if it isn't happening to them, or isn't the core reason for their struggles.
We have created a society where people keep substituting what they want for what they need, and it just happens that what they choose is the most convenient option. Blaming workload is convenient - but it doesn't mean it is the core reason.
Yeah, the US viewpoint versus the European viewpoint might be the sticking point between our opinions on this... in the 6 years I've been at my US company, I've gone through 3 or 4 major restructures where hundreds or thousands of people have been let go... and the workloads of all those people is constantly dumped on the people who remain.
The culture says that they respect work-life balance, but then managers are constantly pushing deadlines that can only be achieved by working way more than 40 hours a week. All the managers I know are in meetings all day, then go home, spend time with their families and then spend another couple of hours replying to all the emails they couldn't respond to during the day. My manager is awesome, but is constantly, constantly a bottleneck because their workload is way too much.
I genuinely know people that don't go for managerial positions because they don't want to work all those extra hours for not much of a pay bump.
My wife often worked 16 hour days maybe a third of the time.
I think American companies often demand long, long hours. China does as well... I'm not sure if you've heard of 996 (a thing US companies want to adopt) where lots of Chinese companies expect their employees to work from 9am to 9pm 6 days a week. I've heard South Korea is similar.
In Australia I've worked for lots of different companies, and some government agencies, and in some places everyone is out the door at 5pm, and others there's still lots of people around at 8pm. I do wonder if your harsh view of your peers is because you started your career in Australia and have imported your work ethic to Finland?
The company I worked for had people on both sides. Americans came and went frequently and likely had an average tenure under two years. Europeans were more around the 6-12 year average.
This sounds like something that Trump would push for, whilst the rest of the world is looking at 4-day weeks.
I don't think so. Most of my professional life has been here in Finland and I used to have less of a work ethic. I think the difference might be that coming to Finland where things are harder in many ways and I started a business, I know what it is to have to work hard in order to survive, with no safety net. I had to grow up and what I found was, I am a better, more rounded person for it - not just with work.
If Trump keeps devastating the US economy and unemployment skyrockets, 996 could very well become the norm.
Honestly dude, I can't imagine starting a business in another country. I was never allowed to start one in the US because of my visa, and it made things hard because for the first few years we were paid less because we were visa-holders, but I'm glad I didn't have to navigate the US federal and state tax codes for businesses, healthcare, etc.
Obviously I haven't shared your experiences, but you don't seem to respect workers in Finland, especially younger ones, I imagine there has to be some level of resentment there since you literally had to work really hard to survive, and they just... don't.