It’s not simply you—work form of stinks proper now.
In case you’re struggling to get one thing executed as a result of too many individuals had been concerned, getting hung up by emotion and battle in your office, or simply swaying below the burden of too many duties in sooner or later . . . congratulations! You’re experiencing work intensification—the gnarliest development we don’t speak about sufficient.
Researchers in Europe have been this phenomenon for a few years. They pin it down to 3 issues taking place, usually all of sudden.
First, workloads are just too heavy—too many duties in too little time. Each job has a model of this. You could be invited to too many conferences or requested to pack too many warehouse pallets in an hour.
Second, work is just too interdependent—it takes too many individuals to get any given activity executed. When Jamie Dimon famously complained a few single choice needing 14 committees for approval, interdependence was the problem.
Third, workplaces have grow to be emotionally difficult. For instance, since COVID-19, rudeness towards frontline employees has increased—and people are feeling it.
To higher perceive how this subject was affecting workplaces, in April 2025 consulting agency Anthrome Perception partnered with Patrick Hyland, an organizational psychologist. We surveyed 1,000 employees starting from entry-level workers to the C-Suite ranges in 5 totally different industries. Our findings had been placing. 1 / 4 of respondents all the time or usually felt overwhelmed and half felt overwhelmed at the very least a few of the time. Over half (62%) had been experiencing activity overload. Over 1 / 4 had been getting whacked by paperwork and an absence of priorities. Nearly a 3rd had been coping with offended coworkers, bosses, and/or clients.
The damaging results of labor intensification
For workers work intensification drives burnout and negatively affects mental health. It could even be driving the file ranges of government turnover we’re seeing within the CEO and CFO roles.
Work intensification also can impression productivity. On the floor, this appears a bit counterintuitive. Do extra duties, get extra executed, extra productiveness, proper?
It’s the center a part of that sentence the place issues break down. Doing extra duties does not imply getting extra executed. First off: the duties could also be a nasty thought to do within the first place. In an period when we spend up to 60% of our time on “work about work” (communication and coordination round what we’re really attempting to get executed), our time is being wasted by a few of the duties we undertake. If work has intensified as a consequence of “work about work,” then we’re simply consuming extra empty work energy, and never participating in wholesome productiveness.
Work intensification additionally comes from a collapse of prioritization—and there too, productiveness erodes quick. Because the saying goes, when all the things’s necessary, nothing’s necessary. When too many duties are coming by way of too shortly, the necessary ones are sure to get misplaced. People get cognitively overloaded. For example, we wrestle to remember lists longer than seven objects in our heads (which is why American telephone numbers are seven digits lengthy). In case you have 14 priorities—all emphasised—your mind goes to faucet out. And it would faucet out on the flawed activity.
Take a look at the opposite two dimensions of labor intensification—extra interdependence and extremely emotional working circumstances—and the productiveness penalties grow to be even clearer. Nobody ever made a corporation extra productive by making processes extra difficult.
We might also have some cultural myths from the startup world (or actually films) that workplaces the place passionate bosses scream and pour their hearts out are extra productive. Truly all that operating round yelling simply eats up much more cognitive house for the unfortunate of us being yelled at.
Rumination—the place your mind can’t cease going over a traumatic occasion time and again—is a well-documented impression of unhealthy emotional interactions at work. As one study discovered, rumination from unpleasantness at work can not solely have an effect on the sleep of workers, however of their companions too. All that yelling shouldn’t be positioning anybody to work successfully.
What to do about work intensification
Work intensification can appear daunting, however there are concrete methods to fight it.
At a person stage, this would possibly imply extra energetic conversations with management about your workload to hone in on what’s essential. It would imply politely opting out of overly complicated processes when potential, or lessening your involvement with these processes. It would imply organising some firewalls in between your self and extremely emotional conditions—or having methods to handle those you may’t keep away from.
For instance, it’s okay to not volunteer to mediate arguments at work, even when that is one thing you’re able to doing. You possibly can ask assembly individuals embroiled in a battle to “take it offline” and never make the remainder of the group spectators to an emotional trade.
Groups can deal with work intensification, too. Common and clear conversations about roles, tasks, and what’s really on everybody’s plate may also help mitigate overwork, course of complexity, and even emotionally charged interactions. Discussing priorities is sweet “work about work”—not wasted time. It’s okay to take a unfavorable angle—understanding “the essence of technique is what you don’t do.” If groups have a transparent view on what’s not value doing and who doesn’t have to be concerned, work intensification will be decreased.
Lastly, organizations can fight work intensification with the appropriate mindset shift. Begin with the rules that not all work is sweet work, not everybody has to the touch all the things, and never all the things needs to be an emotional disaster, and a lot of totally different choices logically observe.
We’re tormented by unhealthy myths: that overwork is to be cherished, that collaboration means everybody in the identical room on a regular basis, and that excessive feelings gasoline excessive outcomes. As soon as we perceive that these behaviors don’t actually drive the appropriate outcomes—and in reality the reverse behaviors are literally extra productive—an entire new array of potentialities open up.
As our research showed, merely being conscious of the three elements (extra duties, extra interdependence, and extra emotion) and passionately combatting them makes one 119% extra prone to really feel extremely efficient. In different phrases, if you understand precisely how work is breaking down, and also you actively combat again . . . you’re making actual progress.
