Abstract
Overload offers a compelling account of how good jobs are going bad, and what solutions can be brought to this challenge. Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen report the evidence from an empirical study and work redesign experiment conducted over five years in the IT division of a large Fortune 500 company based in the United States. The study deliberately focuses on the middle of the occupational spectrum. It looks at professionals and frontline managers at a good, but not elite, firm. The study reveals that even professionals who are well paid, and who work for decent organizations, face increasingly intense jobs in highly pressurized environments. It then shows that these problems can be mitigated through work redesign.
The authors diagnose the fundamental problem faced by the professionals in the study as role overload, rather than role conflict. Overload is defined as “the subjective sense there is too much to do, given the resources (including time and other people) on hand” (p. 19). Through the accounts they report, Kelly and Moen make a convincing case that the root issue is the intensification of work itself, not the balancing of work and family obligations. In recent years, both research and public discourse have been largely preoccupied with role conflict. By contrast, the book moves the theoretical discussion away from work–life balance and into the management of work itself.
Four objective dimensions of work intensity are identified as contributing to a subjective feeling of overload: the weight of long hours, the need for always-on availability, the multi-tasking and split attention at work, and the expectation for face time at work. Overload is shown to matter because it has negative consequences on employees’ well-being, contributes to health issues, deregulates sleep patterns, and spills over to personal and family life. Furthermore, it affects employees regardless of gender, age, or career stage. Even if participants in the study expressed frustration about work intensification, however, it was often accompanied by a sense of resignation and inability to challenge the status quo.
The authors set out to understand both why this overload is happening and why it is not being challenged. The book identifies a pervasive fear of losing one’s job that limits employees’ ability to express dissent. A chief argument is that “job insecurity is the emotional engine that motivates submission to a system of intensive work demands and continual overload” (p. 67). The explanation is located at the level of macro-structural problems of cost-cutting, organizational downsizing, and offshoring labor practices. The book therefore counters the personality-based and reward-based theoretical perspectives in explaining why people work so much. The authors make the case that overload is pervasive in other good jobs across other industries while recognizing that the link between insecurity and overload may not be as clear-cut in other industries.
The book also makes the case that overload is shaped by managerial practices and organizational norms about how work gets done. It highlights the negative implications and costs of the intensive work rhythm and dysfunctional managerial practices. First, the unrealistic timelines imposed on workers negatively affect the quality of work that is produced. Second, the workforce cuts erode collaboration and the ability for teams to help each other. Third, offshoring stretches the hours of US-based employees who now have to coordinate across time zones. Furthermore, there is a cost in losing talent, particularly experienced workers, who do not want to work under these conditions. More so, both a reduced quality and dampening of innovation put the integrity of the firm’s output at risk. Last, the book highlights that future performance is at risk, partly driven by a vicious cycle of employees’ making mistakes due to unrealistic deadlines that they later try to correct.
The authors continue by asking what can change and what solutions can be implemented. They use the evidence from a randomized work redesign field experiment to answer this question. The key principles of the STAR (Support. Transform. Achieve. Results.) work redesign approach were to increase the employees’ control over when and where they do the work, promote social support for personal and family life, and manage high work demands by focusing on results rather than time spent in the office. It is a dual agenda serving both employees’ personal goals and the firm’s effectiveness. STAR questions work processes and management practices, such as setting clearer goals and the use of more thoughtful metrics. The book positions this in sharp contrast to wellness programs and flexible time arrangements. Corporate wellness programs do not question work practices per se, but rather take them as a given. Similarly, flexible time policies create a situation in which people ask for a special arrangement, rather than actually questioning the real issue of intensive work. The key idea underlying this intervention was changing the workplace, not the worker.
In the teams where STAR was implemented, the work redesign intervention resulted in reduced burnout levels (and more sustained engagement), increased job satisfaction, and a reduction in the intention to leave the firm. Although employees were still working hard and facing the same high demands, they felt less emotionally drained by work. The success of this intervention showed the potential to change workplaces for the better. Thus, through this experiment, overload is demonstrated to be a treatable problem by teams, managers, senior managers, and organizational leaders. Nonetheless, the book speaks about the difficulty of maintaining such work redesign interventions in organizations. Despite its demonstrable success, leadership changes at the organization led to the dismantling of STAR without solid reasons. Beyond this study, the issues of unregulated work time and unpredictable schedules are real at both the high end and the low end of the occupational spectrum. The authors propose that private-sector initiatives and public policy changes are needed to fundamentally create a more sane and sustainable future of work.
The firm in which the study took place invited the researchers with the hope that STAR would help retain valued employees, among other desirable outcomes. The book could have therefore explored in more depth this apparent paradox between the company’s desire to retain employees and the insecurity felt by workers themselves. From a subjective perspective, are some employees more or less right to evaluate their job as insecure? From an objective perspective, are some professionals more or less at risk of losing their jobs? As a corollary, does the firm want to retain some employees more than others? Although there was an indication that losing more senior, experienced employees mattered to the organization, a fuller discussion of these questions would have been a welcome addition. Given that one of the chief arguments is that insecurity is a driver that makes employees accept overload, then professionals who feel more secure in their job might feel more empowered to negotiate better working conditions compared to those who feel insecure. This idea and its ethical implications offer fertile ground for further inquiry.
Overload is a remarkable and game-changing book that challenges theoretical perspectives as well as work practices regarding workload management. It will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners interested in work–life balance, well-being, performance, and workplace redesign.