Fear psychosis at the workplace: Employees are spending more and more time at ‘work’, and less and less time on ‘life’

It took a mother’s anguished letter to draw attention to the death of Anna Sebastian Perayil, a chartered accountant working at EY India. In the letter, the grieving mother wrote about the overwhelming workload and toxic atmosphere that took her young daughter’s life.

Anna’s may be an extreme case but there is no doubt that thousands of young professionals are being forced to run on a treadmill that nobody cares to stop. Thankfully, most learn how and when to get off, but many don’t. Should companies leave these young, vulnerable minds alone? It’s not only about EY India; the sad truth is barring a few, most companies simply ignore the need to have a proper mentoring and grievance redressal mechanism at the workplace.

To be sure, stress in itself is not negative. A certain amount of stress is necessary to send the adrenaline soaring skywards — like the stress cricketers face before an important match or when one crosses a busy road. Management consultants have a word for this — positive stress — that provides life’s zing, and keeps us from being bored.

But in these days of hyper-competition, many companies are obsessed with continuously serving bitter pills: Hunker down, reduce headcount, and cut every cost you can. Predictably, many have gone in for multi-tasking (do at least two person’s work for the price of one), extended working hours (12-hour days are not unusual anymore), reduction of variable pay, and lower entry-level salaries.

In such a situation, the old catchphrase “work-life balance” has taken a backseat. Introduced in the mid-1980s, the phrase was used to describe the extent to which workers/executives are able to tend to personal and family needs, in addition to their professional responsibilities. That’s distant memory now as more and more people are having to spend more and more time at work, and less and less time on “life”.

While some of these bitter pills are inevitable, some companies are no doubt overreacting and creating a fear psychosis in office. The problem, say psychologists and mental health experts, is often more acute in the case of younger employees, who are living away or have little time for friends and families and facing loneliness. Added to that is the glorification of long working hours, a lack of job security, and most organisations failing to follow through on the healthy work practices they espouse.

At the heart of the problem is the culture of a company that breeds bosses who think mentoring is an alien concept. Such bosses either take all the credit for themselves, or think employees have no life outside work, or give out too many tasks with impossible and constantly changing deadlines. There are stories about bosses who seem to be having the spine of a jellyfish — someone who would never stand up for their staff.

There is also the obsessive micro-manager who would give assignments but then manage them to death. He/she trusts people the way you would trust a five-year-old behind the wheel of the car. Then there is this officer talking about his table-thumping boss who ordered managers to instill fear in employees to boost productivity. A senior manager in a large company put in his papers a month ago after his boss told him that he has the IQ of an eraser.

It’s the HR department’s job to make sure no company is saddled with such managers due to short-sighted and faulty executive promotion policies, which result in converting exceptional performers into mediocre or sub-standard managers. HR must first find out whether the candidate has the right combination of mental abilities, personal interests, and personality traits to allow for success as a leader.

That’s why many far-sighted companies would promote even an average accountant to a manager because he has the potential to outperform an outstanding accountant in the same managerial position. This does not mean that the outstanding accountant should be ignored, but that the career ladder for him may possibly lie sideways rather than head upward. The old corporate ladder that stretches to the executive suite need not be available for everybody.

Feeling disrespected at work has the largest negative impact on an employee’s overall rating of corporate culture. An abusive management is defined as sustained hostile behaviour toward employees, as opposed to a boss who has a bad day and takes it out on team members.

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, when employees join a company, they expect to find a culture that is inclusive, respectful, ethical, collaborative, and free from abuse by those in positions of power. Not only are these baseline elements of a healthy corporate culture, they are also what companies typically promise in their official core values. When corporate culture fails to deliver on these fundamental commitments, employees understandably react with something stronger than annoyance or disappointment.

What companies don’t realise is that the health costs of stress in the workplace may be much more than anyone thought. A dramatic increase in stress levels has led to spiralling anxiety, burnout, and depression across the globe. According to a United Nations report, workers of the world are united in just one thing these days: record levels of stress. What is more, the report warns, anxiety levels are set to dramatically increase with spreading globalisation, and the economic costs for business will be massive.

Good companies are going in for unvarnished communication with their employees. They are cutting out rumours by being as candid as possible about where the company stands. A CEO’s impersonal, sugar-coated message on the intranet is just not enough, and HR consultants say companies must have enough empowered people at the top who can explain things to their junior colleagues and tell them how everyone can play a role in discovering opportunities.

One hopes the issues raised by Anna Sebastian Perayil’s mother are taken seriously by company managements.