The Fight Against Overwork

Employee wellness has recently been deprioritized in many organizations, replaced by a heightened focus on profit and efficiency. While research shows that wellness improves performance, many organizations opt to focus solely on productivity, leaving wellness in the hands of the employees. However, many individual leaders understand the importance of taking care of their people and want to support employee wellness. Because of this philosophical difference, these leaders tend to face a variety of challenges when attempting to implement great practices on their teams. Specifically, these well-meaning leaders often find themselves fighting against cultures of overwork.

Why Fight Cultures of Overwork?

Cultures of overwork are unfortunately easy to find in organizations, especially in the U.S. Many executive teams focus on creating "lean" teams in support of their focus on improved efficiency and productivity while keeping costs down. However, many of these teams are actually understaffed and overworked, with "lean" translating to "starving for support." Cultures of overwork have the opposite impact than they intend, often leading to reduced efficiency, productivity, and performance. Overwork can lead to burnout—for both employees and their leaders. Leader burnout is particularly harmful as it tends to have a trickle-down effect on their employees.

These types of cultures are tricky to overcome. When others believe that time equals productivity, trying to shift away from overwork can make you seem lazy or lacking dedication.

So, what can you do to fight against overwork for your team? You can start with finding champions.

Who Are Your Champions?

Many of the organizations we studied had at least one or two leaders who truly understood the importance of employee wellness. Do you know who those people are?

Ask yourself a couple of key questions to identify those leaders:

• Whom do people love to work for?
• Who has a great reputation as a caring leader?
• Whose team has the highest retention rate?

It never hurts to ask people you trust to help identify leaders who are aligned in your fight against overwork.

Rally Your Champions

Once you’ve identified your possible champions, set up some time with them to talk. An honest conversation between two like-minded people can go a long way in helping you determine how to move forward. Ask if they’d be willing to help you strategize on how to gain support for your efforts in shifting the culture on your team. Check if they’d be willing to join you in your fight against overwork. If they say yes, create recurring meetings and bring in other champions as you find them. There is power in numbers—leverage this new team of overwork fighters to create a plan to support each other and make a case for change in the broader organization.

There are many ways your new group can make a difference. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Leverage each other to help hold boundaries for your teams. In other words, if you work cross-functionally, don’t overstep on another person’s boundaries outside of your team. Ask your champions to ensure it doesn’t happen when their team works with your team either.
• Make a pact to hold your own boundaries. If you all are logging off in the evening or not responding to emails on weekends, it makes it harder for other leaders to blame one person for not “working hard enough." Plus, role modeling good behaviors may inspire others to do the same.
• In broader meetings with other leaders, support each other when one of you is pushing back on unrealistic deadlines or asking for additional support.
• Work together to create a plan to prove that wellness doesn’t hurt performance. Think about measurement. What does success look like on your team? Keep track of those metrics and how they change over time as you reduce overwork and implement a more wellness-focused culture.

Work together with your champions and use your creative minds with deep knowledge of your specific organization to find what works best for you in your battle against overwork.