Rethinking how much work is enough – Sectors – Economy

The Covid-19 pandemic ended eventually, but, like a railway switching yard, it has already diverted countless lives down very different paths. Millions of people have not returned and will never return to their pre-pandemic work routines, which forces both users and employees to establish new models that adapt to their changing needs. Amid ongoing experiments with hybrid models, we are faced with a deeper question: how much work is enough?

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These post-pandemic changes and experiments, at least in developed countries, could spark a revolution in the labor market as profoundly as the changes in workplaces, hours, and compensation that marked the transition from the agricultural to the industrial era. industrial.

These changes can be seen on two levels. At the macro level, the legal eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek are gradually giving way to a new equilibrium.. This is likely to be a lengthy process, given that it took half a century of labor struggles, union action, and corporate experimentation to reduce America’s daily work hours from 14 to 8 and work weeks from 7 to 5 days.

In 1914, the Ford Motor Company surprised its competitors by cutting the workday at its factory to eight hours, while paying its workers a minimum wage of $5 a day. Congress codified this innovative practice in 1938 through the Fair Labor Standards Act, creating what cultural historian Fred Turner calls the “industrial-age social compact.” Similarly, recent experiments in cutting the workweek to 32 hours resulted in less fatigue, better mental health, and higher life satisfaction.. In fact, most of the participants say that they will not go back to the previous model.

At the micro level, in the last three years, millions of people have reassessed the balance between time and money. During the pandemic shutdowns, many workers have adjusted to new work habits and enjoyed the ability to take a break, spend more time with loved ones or exercise and leisure activities without the stress of commuting and office environments. These experiences later contributed to the so-called Great Resignation and the rise of “silent resignations.”

So when companies start demanding that workers go back to their pre-pandemic normalcy, the question “how much work is enough?” prompted another: “enough for what?” earning a living? To meet the productivity expectations of our employees? To support our pursuit of happiness, or perhaps to retire?

The answers vary, depending on who is asking and who is answering. For millions of low-income workers, the answer is simple: “enough” means earning a living wage to support themselves and their families.

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Among those privileged who can consider the trade-offs between time and money, two groups of employees have emerged—through their words and their actions—as key players in the broader discussion about what constitutes an adequate amount of work.

The first group is made up of caregivers, a sector still dominated by women and which is attracting more men. In labor economics, “work” traditionally refers to paid work that involves the production of goods and services in exchange for monetary compensation..

But following the integration of women into the workforce (including the workforce of labor economists), the field has broadened its focus to encompass unpaid work. This includes raising a family, supporting a home, and meeting the needs of those who cannot care for themselves.

This care work, as activist Ai-jen Poo reminds us, is the “work that makes all other work possible”. For many, this form of work has as much meaning as their formal employment, or even more.

Suppose we expand the question “how much work is enough?” to cover both paid and unpaid work. In that case, it becomes clear that millions of people with caring responsibilities and paid jobs often find themselves working well beyond the conventional eight-hour workday.

So it shouldn’t surprise you that, given the opportunity, many choose to reduce their paid work hours to care for others. Given the social importance of care work, economic statistics and government benefit programs must recognize and account for this critical but unpaid form of work.

The other major group of workers who ask “how much work is enough?” It comprises youth, particularly younger millennial and Gen Z workers, who, in a vast majority, entered the workforce during the pandemic. Just as many young people in the 1960s embraced the counterculture and rejected what they saw as the conformist effort of their parents’ generation. Many Gen Zers are now questioning and rejecting “hustle culture” as another toxic Silicon Valley export..

Gen Z youth grew up during a tumultuous two decades marked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the introduction of the smartphone and social media, the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic. Today, face downward social mobility, democratic rollback amid deepening political polarization, and looming climate catastrophe. Given this historical background, it is natural for them to question their parents’ habits and focus on maintaining their own mental and physical health..

That privileged high-performance athletes Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka. Although they have the determination, drive and discipline to excel sportingly, they gave up major competitions to protect their mental health.

They, as pioneering black women, reject the notion that their self-esteem depends on meeting the expectations they have of others and demonstrate a deep understanding that personal well-being should not be sacrificed for the validation of others. His insistence that life must be about more than producing and earning is a defiant move against capitalism itself..

Since the emergence of ChatGPT and its competitors, discussions about the future of work have revolved around the extent to which human labor will continue to be necessary. Undoubtedly, the integration of generative artificial intelligence into the job market is causing significant disruption, making traditional industrial-age work and workplaces obsolete.. But regardless of what lies ahead, we cannot address the questions of where and how long we will work without first answering the fundamental question of why we work.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER
AND AUTUMN MCDONALD (**)
© PROJECT SYNDICATE

WASHINGTON

Former Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State, Executive Director of the New America think tank, Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

(**) Senior member of New America, has written for Slate, Pacific Standard and Stanford Social Innovation Review.

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invest in wellness By Carmen Toro. Text published in Ethics (**)One person dedicates a

work activity an average of 1,764 hours a year, according to estimates from the International Labor Organization

. We spend 30% of our time working, and 45% of the employed population acknowledge that work overload affects their personal lives.Other factors such as discrimination and inequality, insecurity, lack of recognition or precarious conditions —whether economic or treatment— are factors that arise in mental health in daily performance in the workplace. Chronic fatigue, lack of efficiency, depression or insomnia, among others, are some of the alterations derived from the stress contracted in this environment.

One way to try to reverse these situations derived from work is ‘wellness 3.0’ that, through the promotion of human resources policies within financial organizations, integrate measures to improve not only the physical health of employees, but also their emotional and mental health. The objective of this discipline, which is becoming more and more widespread —especially in large companies— is to

create a framework that allows care for all levels that impact well-being

(physical, mental, emotional) of a person so that they have a positive return in the company, so as to increase productivity and reduce employee casualties.

According to the professor and director of the DKV-IE Chair on Employee Health and Well-being, Rocío Bonet, “companies that fail to offer a workplace in which employees can prosper run the risk of facing an unmotivated workforce and you are likely to find it difficult to attract and retain talent. However, recent data suggests that the level of employee well-being is far from what is desired for many organizations.

The expert points out that current changes in the labor market, such as the widespread adoption of remote work, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to manage workers or demographic changes, pose challenges for companies about the best way to to create places that promote the well-being of employees. (Also: ‘Sarah Ferguson, the redheaded duchess who fell in love with the Colombian chontaduro’)

It is of vital importance that organizations and companies become aware of the need to take care of the physical and mental health of their employees.and make work-life balance and flexibility measures available to them, the implementation of teleworking whenever possible and, of course, a decent salary according to the nature and functions of the position they perform.

The cost of not carrying out these actions harms not only the health and well-being of workers, but also, in the long term, becomes an economic cost for companiessince they will suffer lower productivity and a higher staff turnover rate, as well as difficulty in attracting and retaining talent, which also translates into an economic cost and time derived from the selection and training processes.

As a sample, a button: globally, the WHO estimates that every year 12,000 million working days are lost due to depression and anxiety, which supposes an annual cost of one billion dollars in lost productivity.

Ethic is an ecosystem of knowledge for change from which we analyze the latest global trends through a commitment to information quality and under an inalienable editorial premise: progress without humanism is not really progress.

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