The New Norm: Constant Availability in the Workplace

-- By MatthewSchwartz - 27 Nov 2023

Constant Availability: 24/7 Workforce

There is little doubt that more people are working longer hours than ever before, due to the constant availability that technology provides us. We are more connected than ever before. There are of course benefits to working from home: less commute time, more flexibility, and the ability to spend more time with our loved ones. However, we are working around three hours more per day, on average. Also, burnout is at an elevated level compared to before COVID-19.

The trend of institutional actors (the government, workplace, and school) encroaching more into our lives for their benefit is no new trend. In Orwell’s famous book, 1984, it was assumed that mass surveillance and social control could only originate by the government.; however, this is not the case at all. According to Shoshana Zuboff, we are living in an age of “surveillance capitalism.” The behavioral data that both private and governmental actors collect about us are used to exploit us. The data could be used to predict and profit from our every move like a behavioral futures market.

The workplace has leaned in on the culture of constant surveillance, like the other facets in society, and has crossed nearly all lines away as to when the workday ends. Flexibility in the workplace is now seen as synonymous with the never-ending workday.

The Cons of Constant Availability

It is no surprise today that our ability to focus and pay attention are collapsing today. 35% of workers feel like they can’t turn their phone off because their boss might contact them anytime. In the Social Dilemma, social media executives talk about how algorithms are used to manipulate our behavior to lead to longer and more consistent engagement with the platform. Social media is meant to become addicting and to extract every possible cent out of us, either through advertising or purchases on the platform.

Like how social media attempts to alter our behavior and make us constantly available to become addicted to the platform, workforces are now making more of an effort to intrude into our personal time and become an omnipresent aspect of our life, even outside of normal working hours. Research has proven that our brains need breaks. Burnout is at an elevated level compared to before COVID-19. While I was working prior to law school, there were definitely portions of time that I felt unmotivated and not inspired because of the constant availability requirement. My feelings were also shared by several workers in a study in 2022 by the American Psychological Association Work and Well-Being study. 32% of workers experienced emotional exhaustion, a 38% jump from prior to the pandemic. There are also physiological changes to the brain as a result of acute chronic job stress that can atrophy the brain mass and cause a decrease in brain weight. As imagined, anxiety, stress, and depression, and sleep quality decrease as you work more hours.

A Potential Solution?

A Shorter Workweek

I think a solution to this very issue is quite challenging, especially since work and other facets of life have become all-encompassing. Our job is inextricability tied to our identity, but it should not be our whole identity. It should not deter out mental and physical health to the extreme. There eventually will become a point of diminished returns when working more actually harms employee’s productivity and the profitability of the business. Finding the goldilocks zone for each employee is a guess at best.

The best incentive to continue working is pay to many people. However, limiting the numbers of hours worked also will impair employee’s autonomy. Some countries have toyed with this notion of limiting overtime hours per year. In Spain, employees can’t work over 80 overtime hours yearly.

The real question is how are countries determining what is work. Is me checking my phone out of anxiety that my employer has emailed me at 8 PM, despite the workday supposedly ending at 5 PM considered work? I would argue that it is, since this additional burden is consistently being placed on me outside of working hours. The fact that there is a possibility that additional work will need to be done today, leading me to constantly have to check-in on the status of my work email, is work.

Given my definition of work, it inevitably becomes unlikely that something that limits job hours per week or yearly is unlikely to work, since client-facing jobs like big law will require peaks in hours to meet client demands. Should we as a society just stop trying to progress? I think the answer to that question is rhetorical: no.

Since I think society as a whole want to grow, and I believe that we should constantly be trying to improve, the solution to overbearing work hours, stress, anxiety, etc. is a shorter work week with longer hours on the workday and breaks. 4 Day Week Global has implemented this strategy with many organizations. The organizations they have worked with had a 36% increase in revenue, a 42% decrease in employee resignations and a 54% reported increase in work ability from employees. By not requiring an employee to work an extra day, they can mitigate stressors of having to constantly check their phone and feel like work is an even larger part of their identity. That is why I think the future of work should be a 4-day week. This will help mitigate the inevitable progression of employers into our day-to-day. If a 4 -day week is implemented, the 4 work days inevitably will be more challenging, but there is a greater expectation of accomplishing goals that day. This in turn will likely lead to improved efficiency.

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