In one survey, 61 percent of employees said that workplace stress had
made them sick and 7 percent said they had actually been hospitalized.
Job stress costs US employers more than $300 billion annually and may
cause 120,000 excess deaths each year. In China, 1 million people a year
may be dying from overwork. People are literally dying for a paycheck.
And it needs to stop.
In this timely, provocative book, Jeffrey Pfeffer contends that many
modern management commonalities such as long work hours, work-family
conflict, and economic insecurity are toxic to employees--hurting
engagement, increasing turnover, and destroying people's physical and
emotional health--and also inimical to company performance. He argues
that human sustainability should be as important as environmental
stewardship.
You don't have to do a physically dangerous job to confront a
health-destroying, possibly life-threatening, workplace. Just ask the
manager in a senior finance role whose immense workload, once handled by
several employees, required frequent all-nighters--leading to alcohol
and drug addiction. Or the dedicated news media producer whose
commitment to getting the story resulted in a sixty-pound weight gain
thanks to having no down time to eat properly or exercise. Or the
marketing professional prescribed antidepressants a week after joining
her employer.
In Dying for a Paycheck, Jeffrey Pfeffer marshals a vast trove of
evidence and numerous examples from all over the world to expose the
infuriating truth about modern work life: even as organizations allow
management practices that literally sicken and kill their employees,
those policies do not enhance productivity or the bottom line, thereby
creating a lose-lose situation.
Exploring a range of important topics including layoffs, health
insurance, work-family conflict, work hours, job autonomy, and why
people remain in toxic environments, Pfeffer offers guidance and
practical solutions all of us--employees, employers, and the
government--can use to enhance workplace wellbeing. We must wake up to
the dangers and enormous costs of today's workplace, Pfeffer argues.
Dying for a Paycheck is a clarion call for a social movement focused
on human sustainability. Pfeffer makes clear that the environment we
work in is just as important as the one we live in, and with this urgent
book, he opens our eyes and shows how we can make our workplaces
healthier and better.
