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Dying for a Paycheck
Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performanceand What We Can Do About It | Jeffrey Pfeffer
6 posts | 1 read | 3 to read
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 employeeshurting engagement, increasing turnover, and destroying peoples physical and emotional healthand also inimical to company performance. He argues that human sustainability should be as important as environmental stewardship. You dont 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-nightersleading 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 usemployees, employers, and the governmentcan use to enhance workplace wellbeing. We must wake up to the dangers and enormous costs of todays 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.
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review
shortsarahrose
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Mehso-so

While much of the individual facts cited were interesting, Pfeffer‘s critique falls short for me in that he is examining a systemic problem yet doesn‘t consider at all the role that our economic system (capitalism) plays in this crisis. As if Marx hadn‘t already identified many of these issues in the 19th c. when he wrote Capital 🙄 Many of the issues disproportionately affect lower income people, yet he mostly focuses on white collar examples.

shortsarahrose Solutions are posited at the level of companies/managers or individual workers rather that at the macroeconomic level. Also, he sometimes compares the attention brought to “human sustainability” to that given to environmental sustainability in a way that suggests they are in competition with each other, which just felt weird 😒 13mo
34 likes1 comment
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shortsarahrose
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Had to drop off some 💩 samples for my gastroenterologist, so treated myself to a little break before going back to the office.

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shortsarahrose
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Enjoying another day with #CoffeeAndABook - same book, but this time with a vanilla latte and an egg and cheese sandwich 😋

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shortsarahrose
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“. . . the toll in both excess mortality and health-care costs from harmful workplace practices is high in the United States. Moreover, unhealthy employees cost employers in higher workers‘ compensation costs, medical insurance costs, and, perhaps most important, diminished productivity on the job.”

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shortsarahrose
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“You don‘t have to work in a coal mine, on an oil rig, in a chemical plant, or in construction to face a possibly toxic, health-destroying workplace.” #FirstLineFriday

Took a half day off work to do my monthly Stelara injection, take a nap, and, now, enjoy #CoffeeAndABook (white chocolate pumpkin mocha, bagel and cream cheese, and one of the books I picked up yesterday) before running some errands (Petsmart and Target).

wisherwishinguponastar I received a mental health bingo sheet in August at work and asked “What in the world is this for?” A coworker told me it was plausible deniability for a toxic workplace by management. 14mo
shortsarahrose @wisherwishinguponastar yeah, unfortunately that sounds pretty typical 🫠 14mo
35 likes2 comments
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shortsarahrose
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A couple books from the free book table after a patron returned some items from a now-closed branch that were due back in 2018 😆 obviously, we re-purchased any of the items we wanted back by now, so onto the free table they went #bookhaul

Ruthiella Based on the two titles, let‘s hope that patron found a better job! 😬 14mo
34 likes2 comments