While there has been a lot of talk lately about the merits of a four-day workweek, many Americans are laboring seven days a week.
With large-scale layoffs, hiring freezes, concerns over a recession, potential consequences of the United States getting involved in the war in Eastern Europe, record-high inflation and interest rates making everything more expensive, people are worried about holding onto their jobs.
Despite ongoing trends like quiet quitting, Bare Minimum Monday, Try-Less Tuesday and acting your wage, the labor force has significantly shifted. Unlike the Great Resignation, finding a white-collar job is more challenging now. You don’t want to be the person that is let go. To avoid this fate, people are working harder and longer hours. As inflation and higher interest rates increase the costs of everything, losing a job can become a financial hardship.
Working Long Hours And Weekends
During the early months of the pandemic, when millions of workers lost their jobs, those that still remained in the workforce put in longer hours, without any increase in compensation, to remain employed. Similarly, but not to the same extent as then, employees are now working longer hours and weekends, as white-collar workers have been laid off by top companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon to Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, Fortune reported. With the ubiquity of remote technology software, platforms and apps, there’s pressure to always be present and working more than the standard workweek.
According to a report by ActivTrak, a workplace software company, people are working more hours over the weekend. In the beleaguered tech sector, reeling from an unrelenting stream of layoff announcements, the amount of time put in on Saturdays and Sundays soared by 31%. Job cuts have also impacted media company employees, and the study shows that they’ve put in 53% extra hours on average on weekends.
According to the study, the additional hours spent working are primarily due to the layoffs, which result in the remaining workers having to take on the workload of those who were let go. Due to hybrid, in-office and remote work styles, people are inundated with video meetings, Slack messages and other daily distractions that take away from the workday, forcing workers to place catch up on the weekend.
Worried About Being Labeled A Low Performer And Pushed Out The Door
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, is concerned over the proliferation of managers within the social media giant, asserting it creates bloat and spiraling costs. Zuckerberg is calling 2023 the “year of efficiency,” which is a socially acceptable term for getting rid of highly paid managers that have built up large fiefdoms without adding value.
Zuckerberg said, “I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.”
Meta also rated thousands of its tech workers as being subpar, according to the Wall Street Journal. The low-performance ranking is considered within the tech community as a foreshadowing of upcoming layoffs. Bonuses may be cut, and Zuckerberg plans to slow the hiring of engineers by “at least 30%” in 2023.
This tactic will push people into leaving by attrition and save the company from paying large severance packages, as Zuckerberg is focused on implementing cost-cutting initiatives. If these measures don’t influence people to leave and seek other opportunities, there may be another wave of layoffs.
As other companies copy Meta’s game plan, tech workers will become concerned about the safety of their jobs. The fear isn’t overblown, as Google coldly downsized workers with up to 20 years of experience via email.
Being deemed a low performer—a pejorative term that has a connotation of not meeting expectations and being considered in the lower end of the workforce—is a red flag signaling you may be selected for the next round of downsizing. Some workers are put on performance improvement plans, while others are subjected to the much-debated stack-ranking process. If they are measured as performing lower than their cohorts, they’ll likely be nudged out the door.
Some human resources professionals, recruiters, hiring managers and interviewers hold biases and preconceived notions about people who are laid off. They contend that the person may have done something wrong, lacked the ability to achieve the required results or was a low performer.
Working Yourself To Death
In light of the pressure placed on workers, it’s understandable why they are putting in longer hours to save their jobs. However, all the extra work comes with a price.
A study by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization concludes that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with a higher risk of a stroke and dying from ischemic heart disease, compared to working 35 to 40 hours a week. There is heightened concern that people are working increasingly longer hours, which puts more people at risk of an “early death.”
Source: Forbes
