Recently I have commentated on mental health and burnout in relation to business-owners and their teams.

Overwork is where an employee works beyond their capacity. This may be voluntarily, implicitly (through cultural expectations) or explicitly (requested). Overwork blurs the line between working hours and private hours.

Overwork typically presents as significantly extended working hours over a working week. This can include bleeding into day and night as well as 7-day working weeks. Symptoms of employees suffering overwork can be exhaustion, stress, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, poor diet, extreme behaviour, infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse. Overall, overwork leads to a loss of self, personal relationships, hobbies and interests.

In extreme cases, overwork has led to death as strung-out workers can’t keep pace with the expectations of perceived work deliverables.

In this blog, I explore the issue of overwork which has presented itself in a new form within post-Covid virtual and hybrid workplaces.

Let’s start by looking at three stages of overwork that I’ve observed chronologically.

Overwork 1.0 appeared in the decades leading up to the late 1990’s within the typical office environment. Long days in the office were mandatory with the work hard and play hard mentality. Deep extended hours into the night (or all-nighters even) were a badge of honour. Employees at all levels were expected to keep pace with the firm’s work culture. However, the work-day fundamentally ceased upon exiting the lift each day.

Overwork 2.0 coincided with the internet and mobile phones entering the workplace on a mainstream basis in the latter 1990’s and early 2000’s. Through this period, we saw the dynamic shift from work being conducted purely in the physical environment of the office. Employees could access work, or be accessed by management, on email and by mobile phones. This was the start of work creep into the private lives of employees and their homes.

Overwork 3.0 commenced during the Covid pandemic, and now post-Covid, has run rampant through the 24/7 virtual workplace. The delineation between the working environment of the office, the home and other physical environments is blurred or non-existent. Work hours and personal hours have also collided through working from hour, the virtual workplace and the global village. Beyond technology, geo-arbitrage and the gig-economy have created workplaces that are diverse, dynamic and limitless.

Overwork 4.0 is where we are now; so let’s explore the current state of play.

The current state of overwork heavily features business-owners, senior management and to a lesser extent middle-management. Intermediate and lower-level employees seem to have taken to the virtual hybrid workplace with vigour, and tweaked their lives to advantage overall. Working from home, less or no travel, and flexible daytime hours have been overall wins.

The challenge for business-owners and management has been on how to manage, lead and communicate to a fragmented workforce splintered geographically and working varying hours. It is so much harder to supervise and manage away from a central workplace together, in-person and on the same timeline. Virtual management takes more time, must be repeated more often in remote-work forums and eliminates the peer-to-peer learnings and in-house communications that occur within the office.

The big issue of course is productivity and there is a lag in us seeing this. For most businesses, productivity in the post-Covid virtual or hybrid workplace is hard to measure or even invisible.

But ultimately customers will decide. Customers don’t care how you run your process, they just measure your performance on the goods and services you provide on time, cost and quality.

This is why business-owners and their management teams are now subject to Overwork 3.0.

Owners and management now in hybrid or virtual workplaces must:

Spend more time crafting management and leadership messaging that will be understood by the team
Identify effective processes to set up, direct, supervise and monitor operational teams
Identify how to measure performance and productivity
Identify how to replace physical on-the-job training with remote training
Identify new and effective ways in which to engage, empower, reward and appraise performance
Mentor remotely rather than in-person
Close gaps on in-house communication that used to occur organically through the collision of people together in the office, being replaced by digital communication
Hold more Zoom or MS Teams sessions throughout the week
Make more phone calls and send more emails to more employees to direct or support team members throughout the week because of not seeing them incidentally at the physical workplace
Conduct more welfare checks on employees working remotely
Ensure working from home conditions are efficient, IT capable and OH&S compliant
Maintain competitive advantage and meet shareholder expectations
Manage continuing customer expectations and deliverables
Deliver key business and financial metrics
Assess office/factory site and logistical requirements under a smaller physical workforce
Deal with significant real-wages growth and career progression expectations
Deal with ongoing and emerging labour shortages
Deal with higher-interest rates and an inflationary environment

All of these factors have led to Overwork 3.0 and it is extending the working week of business-owners and their management teams.

In speaking with a multitude of businesses on a rolling daily basis, Overwork 3.0 is significantly challenging them.

Management tasks are simply taking so much more time.

Phone calls and emails are being checked early morning and well into the evening. Owners and management desperately battle to respond to the fragmented remote workforce spreading their work hours over a day on an individual basis.

Laptops are open on the couch late into the evening.

Mobile phones are kept at arms-length ‘in case someone needs something from me’.

6-20 employees that may have been addressed in-house through a group meeting or via a quick lap of the office, now requires a multitude of digital communications to achieve the same cut-through.

But the multitude of digital communications can never deliver the same understanding or effect.

Owners and management teams are tired.

Overwork 3.0 is real and upon us.

The scary part is that business-owners and management teams are so stoic. They put on their game-faces and mask the underlying fatigue and despair. They don’t want their employees to see them struggle and they certainly don’t want their customers to.

So they suffer in silence.

Until Overwork 3.0 catches up with them.

Through mental health, physical health and the breakdown of key personal or business relationships.

Financial ruin may follow.

Maybe even significant illness.

And not enough people are talking about this.

Mainstream media and social media seem dialled into the ‘employee side’ of the post-Covid environment.

But I want to put some balance into the commentary by highlighting the other side of the coin.

Owners and management teams must rebalance the post-Covid workplace dilemma and find the equilibrium where all parties can win at work.

With Overwork 3.0, we need to challenge the new status quo to find a fair and equitable balance where all parties win.

If you sense Overwork 3.0 has enveloped you, start a conversation and speak to your business partners, management team, mentors, peers, colleagues, friends and families.

Don’t be passive and silent.

Most importantly, have respectful and collaborative discussions with your entire team to workshop finding greater balance in the post-Covid workplace.

Workshop.

Debate.

Tweak.

Trial.

Negotiate.

Reset.

Find a path back to a winning sustainable business model within the hybrid or remote post-Covid workplace.

I write blogs & videos just like this one on business, productivity and human development. If you'd like it delivered straight to your inbox head to https://darrenkbourke.com/the-fourth-moon-blog and let me know your email.

Email me at darren@darrenkbourke.com to schedule a meeting (at no cost or obligation) to discuss how I can help you, your business and your team this year.