The AFP has a very interesting article regarding worker stress and what it means on society, healthcare and even the economy:

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

What’s really interesting is that this report was conducted in Europe. In Europe, people don’t work as much as they do in the United States, plus they typically get a lot more off days, either through vacation or national holidays. That means that the problems highlighted in the report are, in all probability, much greater here in the United States.

It should come as no shock that much more is expected of workers. Last year corporations posted record profits, yet we still have high unemployment. The top fat cats have realized they can make people work harder and keep their costs down, turning that savings into pure profits. Add to that the high availability of workers and you got companies who have all the leverage in this increased workload. Can’t handle it or don’t like it? Fine – there’s plenty of people out there who need the work.

But the problems don’t end when you clock out. We live in the communication age and that gives employers more of a chance to add to the work load. More and more companies require employees to have internet at home and check their email. So you get done with dinner and trying to enjoy time with your family, but you need to check that work email first. Bam! There’s a problem and now your evening is shot dealing with it, a lot of times without pay.

And what about venting? Our society has moved to an online social setting through places like Facebook and Twitter. Try venting about your employer on there and you just might find yourself unemployed.

Now I’m sure a lot of pro-business people are thinking, “well this is great news for business. We get more work and less cost in salaries”. At first sight it might appear as such, but remember that this reports was conducted in Europe, where they typically look at the larger picture. A big part of that picture is health, something that Europe realizes affects their society and economy as a whole (if only Americans could realize that):

The phenomenon is rapidly growing more prevalent, he added. According to a study this week by one of Germany’s top health insurance companies, one in five workers in Europe’s top economy has fallen ill from stress at work.

In the last four years, sales of anti-depression drugs have risen by more than 40 percent in Germany, the study showed.

Anti-depressants are not cheap, so if insurance is having to cover more people taking the happy pills, their costs are going up. They have to make up those costs somehow, so they increase premiums. Now the worker is getting more taken out of their check and that adds to stress and depression. Hello there, mister vicious cycle!

The effects on health don’t stop at stress and depression though:

“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,” said Schuepbach.

I remember during the height of the bird flu epidemic, employers were threatening people for calling off. Again greed cloud better judgment. Instead of having one employee absent, employers would rather risk whole departments or companies with illness just to get that single person in. Of course a lot of this is because individual employees are much more important today than they were before. Today we see more and more where a certain employee is the only one that knows how to do their job. Some of this is the result of companies going outside to higher management, instead of promoting from within and having the benefit of more cross-trainer personnel. Another part of the problem is increased responsibilities on employees. They have to learn things like computer systems and how to do a job that used to take 2-3 people. That means it’s even harder to replace that single person if they are out sick.

And trust me. This isn’t something that happens in big, technical companies. It can even occur in the service sector. When I worked for Lowe’s as a plumbing specialist, it was very common for me to get calls on my off days about special orders, or people in the department not knowing how to answer the question. If I tried to tell them it was my off day, I was told that it didn’t matter. I was also not allowed to get paid for this time.

So how do we fix these problems? That’s the biggest question of them all. Going back to strong unions would be a great start. Giving the National Labor Board increased power would also be a win, but the biggest fix needs to start at the top. We need to get executives that realize their short bursts of increased cash flow can have very serious consequences in the long run. It would be great to see the United States take the lead on this, but as I said in the beginning, we lead the world in being overworked.