I learned a new word from an article I read yesterday in The New York Times. I'll get to the article in a moment. The new word is 'workism'; it is defined as follows:
The article itself was the transcript of an interview between Rogé Karma, the staff editor for The Ezra Klein Show, and Sarah Jaffe, an author who has written a book called
Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (
Transcript: Rogé Karma Interviews Sarah Jaffe for ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com). I sent the link to a few of my friends whom I know will enjoy reading it, because we have discussed several aspects of this topic earlier. The interview provides food for thought and discussion but not concrete solutions for how to deal with the problem, and it clearly is a problem (
Workism Is Making Americans Miserable - Marcellus). There are a lot of research studies being conducted about the effects of workism on the lives of Americans.
Americans have been overworking for years and the word workaholism was often used to describe the almost addictive behavior that many workers exhibited. They had to be at the office no matter what, and it was not uncommon for them to announce that whenever you ran into some of them. They wore their workaholism like a badge of honor, even though it affected their physical and mental health. They worked overtime, on weekends, during their free time. They lived, breathed and ate work at the expense of their family and social lives. I personally know a woman (in New York) who had a high-powered job for which she sacrificed her social life. That meant rarely getting together with good friends; her husband worked at an equally high-powered job so apart from their jobs and raising two children with the help of a live-in nanny, their lives were quite socially isolated. I'm not sure how she feels about her choices today as a sixty-five year old woman, but back in the 1980s 'marrying your job' was almost encouraged for women. Women had to get ahead, make inroads, compete with and in the same way as men. Women's magazines (e.g. Ms. magazine) encouraged this way of thinking. It was hard not to be affected by it all, because the allure of work was already strong without the hype surrounding it. Remember, we grew up in an America where the work ethic was alpha and omega. It was drummed into us that having a strong work ethic was important, that getting a good job (well-paying) was important. A college education would make the latter possible. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Nose to the grindstone, whether it meant studying hard or working hard or both. I remember it well. I started working part-time jobs when I was fourteen, and each summer I got agitated if I couldn't find a summer job. In my twenties, I worked at my first lab job and finished my biology master's degree at night. I switched jobs (another lab job) and began an MBA program after work. When my father died I realized that I couldn't do it all and quit the MBA program in order to focus on my work and on having free time to be together with friends (not always easy when your commute to and from Manhattan was about two hours long). When I moved abroad I worked sixty-hour weeks, as did my husband. We were scientists working in the lab and we loved what we did. I spent six years doing my PhD alongside my job. I don't think we worried about whether our jobs loved us back. But a certain amount of our identity came from our work. We were concerned with doing good research and publishing the results of that work, and we did that well until the way of doing research changed drastically around 2005. I'll come back to that. But suffice it to say that we overworked ourselves for many years. Do I regret it? No, I don't. We were not real workaholics because we did not sacrifice our personal lives for our work. We got together often with friends and family, raised a child, pursued our hobbies, took vacations, and did all those things that make for a good life outside of work. Now that I'm retired, I do wonder if one of the reasons I retired early is because I literally ran out of steam, physically. I was tired. Perhaps no wonder. Having retired, I don't miss work nor do I miss the workplace atmosphere of competition and politics.
When I moved to Norway in my thirties, it took me quite a while to get used to having four weeks of summer vacation. In the States, I hardly used my summer vacation so that it accumulated and my workplace had to remind me to take my two weeks each year. I remember sitting by the pool at the apartment complex where I lived on a few of those vacation days during the hot New Jersey summers, wondering what I was going to do and how I would use the time. I spent one vacation visiting a friend in Kentucky; another time I visited another friend who had moved to Michigan. But by and large I really didn't know what to do with 'all that free time'. The same was true for several years after I moved to Norway. And then it changed. Slowly I began to look forward to summer vacations. My husband and I traveled around Europe. I traveled back to New York for a week or two at a time to visit family and friends, and still do that each summer. I began to relish having free time. The only time I had ever had so much time off (four weeks) was when I was still working in Manhattan and had a major operation that forced me to recover at home for six to eight weeks. I couldn't do much physically so I had to learn to lie on the sofa and take it easy, read, listen to music, write, do photography, and play with my cats. I wasn't married then so I spent that time by myself. It was an eye-opener and quite valuable, as the forced time off showed me that I had an identity apart from 'employee'.
'Workism' has apparently taken over American work life. Work has become an all-consuming activity and the sole source of a person's identity according to the articles I've been reading. Companies want more and more from their employees without paying them more. At the same time they want them to be motivated and happy workers. Companies are interested in efficiency and production and have developed all sorts of novel ways to measure both. Control of employees is paramount. Smart phones have made it possible for work to invade all aspects of life at all times of the day. Employees feel obligated to answer emails at all hours of the day. Leadership courses promote the idea of motivation as being paramount for a good workplace environment; the idea of transactional work, going to work to get a paycheck and doing just what you need in order to get that paycheck, is discouraged. Nowadays you go to work to get motivated, to enhance your life and your identity. Work provides your identity and the main purpose of your life. Nowadays your work should feed your soul, heart, body and mind. But what if work doesn't do that? The majority of employees don't experience work in this way, yet they are told the opposite. It is a recipe for misery, yes.
Has workism taken hold in Norway? Yes, it has to a large degree. I can only speak for the scientific community, but my impression is that many scientists derive their identity and life's purpose from their work and that they have bought into the workism hype. The workism hype includes all the tricks that workplaces (university hospitals and universities) use to maintain control over their employees, to keep them efficient and productive. Around 2005, the way of doing science in Norway changed. Policies surrounding the way that science was organized and conducted changed, determined by the government. First came the large centers of excellence (idea adapted from the USA and England), where one or two group leaders received huge amounts of funding to organize research centers devoted to one specific field of research, e.g. molecular cancer or personalized medicine. These centers created extensive networks with other centers, nationally and internationally. The emphasis was on creating large research groups at the expense of small ones; the latter were left to their own devices, most of them without further funding, so many of them ceased to exist after a time. Those who carried on did so knowing they would not get funding and knowing too that they would be harassed, mocked or ignored. At the same time, researchers were told that their output was to be controlled and measured continually via progress reports, internal reports, impact factors and H-indices. All of these determined your worth and identity as a scientist. The greater the output (publications in high-impact factor journals, PhD students, book chapters, courses, etc.) and the higher your H-index, the greater your chances of getting funding and the better you were as a scientist. I've written about this many times before. Scientists with funding in Norway are considered to be 'good' scientists; those without are considered to be 'bad' ones. Black and white, no in-between. Think big and dream big (and throw in the buzzword innovation) and you're a 'good' scientist, think small and you're not. Scientists without funding don't 'work hard enough' in the view of the 'good' scientists. The 'good' scientists are those who find a way to constantly remind others (the bad scientists) that they're the best--they work the hardest, they're at work all the time, they get the most funding, they live/breathe/sleep science, and they have the most students (translated, they're popular). Their identity is totally wrapped up in their work. They have no insight into themselves or others and possess little empathy for others. They complain a lot. They complain that they work too hard but they wear their overwork like a badge of honor. They complain that they have hundreds of emails to answer, too many meetings to attend, but they would never trade away the irritations for the 'boring' lives of the scientists they label as 'bad'. They like to complain because that's part of their identity. They have little else in their lives that motivates or drives them, and in some cases they resort to borderline ethical behavior in order to keep what money they've gotten, e.g. trying to intimidate granting agencies into giving them money they mean is rightfully due them as the great scientists they are. They can't wait for the 'bad' scientists to quit or retire, because that frees up more money for them or their cronies. The hype surrounding them is that they are important; the reality is something else again. The undercurrent in Norway at present is that you should be working, always, and that extends even to retirees. Whenever I bring up volunteer work as a possible activity for retirees, people get quiet. They don't know what to say. You should be working and getting paid for it. After all, we're talking identity, we're talking prestige, status, importance. Retirement is not looked upon favorably here as it is in America. It rankles several people in their seventies whom I know here that they 'had to retire' because they had reached retirement age. They resent being made to feel old; the truth is that they derive their identities from their jobs. They resent the loss of their identities. That does not describe me.
Social interactions, faith/religion, and extracurricular activities outside of work used to contribute to a healthy self-image and identity. The idea that work will be the sole contributor to creating our identities is a very misguided one. When things are going well at work, we don't think about our vulnerability in the workplace. It is not until we are threatened with the loss of our jobs that we 'wake up' and realize that we may be spending too much time at the office and that the rest of our lives deserve as much if not more attention and focus. It is not until we burn out or hit the wall that we realize that we can actually lose our motivation for a job and that sometimes it is nearly impossible to get it back. That forces us to rethink things. I think it's healthy to hit the wall, even though it's painful and uncomfortable. It's our minds and bodies telling us that they have had enough, that they cannot continue doing what they've been doing anymore.
I am flying in the face of every leadership and motivational course I have attended during the past ten years when I say that we should return to or adopt a transactional approach to work, as in, I the worker will do the work stipulated in the contract I sign with my workplace for a set salary. If I do more work than stipulated then I will receive overtime for it. If the workplace wants me to be available after hours and on weekends, then they must pay for that. White collar workers, e.g., academic research scientists, typically are not unionized (in Norway they are) and the idea of transactional work would not appeal to most of them. They are used to giving their all and working long hours to make it in order to obtain permanent jobs and tenure. Most don't obtain these things; the hype in Norway is that you will after four years in one position and it's one big lie. Scientific academia is an elite profession populated by elitists who have no interest in opening up the field to all. It is not a profession populated by truly great visionary scientists, teachers and writers, although you do find them. So therefore I think that a transactional approach to the profession is warranted. Some of the younger scientists here are starting to think in that way; science is a job, like any other. They want a 9 to 5 life with weekends and evenings free and time for family and friends. Why shouldn't they have that? Just because the reigning powers that be say otherwise?
You find out how much you are worth to your workplace when you are sick, need time off for personal issues, or when management has to get rid of a certain percentage of its workforce. If the company needs to fire you, they will, no questions asked, no mercy. Firing is transactional; there is nothing motivational about it, as in, we need to fire you, you need to leave, you will get unemployment etc. until you get a new job. No emotions involved, just pure efficiency. That's how it should be when an employee decides to quit his or her job. No emotions, just do it. The reality is something else again because workers grow attached to their co-workers. But if we had a less work-centered approach to life, we could leave workplaces behind much easier, and that would contribute to changing how workplaces deal with employees. My recent reading has indicated that up to the pandemic year, most power was centered in workplace management. Post-pandemic, much less so. Employees simply don't want to return to 'what was' and many have quit their jobs. The pendulum swung too far in the wrong direction, where employees were little more than pieces on a chessboard, moved around at the whims of their employers. Told to accept any and all changes at a moment's notice (don't be resistant to change--that's anathema to management). Told to be available at all hours in order to increase efficiency and productivity, regardless of what that does to employees' personal lives. Time will tell in terms of what develops, but I hope that younger employees especially retain their newfound power and that necessary changes in policies are made so that Americans (and others) can get their lives back.
