Three reasons our relationship with work has become strained

As our modern relationship with work has become more strained, constant cracks in the surface have become visible, with each flare-up a sign that something dramatic needs to change. During the pandemic years, many workers threatened to join ‘the great resignation’ and switch to better employment. Crack! On TikTok, younger workers celebrated the art of doing the bare minimum at work, calling it ‘quiet quitting’. Craaack!

Attitudes to work have soured so much that entire movements have sprung up questioning the very notion of working in the first place. One of these is ‘anti-work’, rooted in Marxism and anarchism, and the belief that everything needs to be, sometimes literally, burnt to the ground and society rebooted without forcing anyone to do anything.

• Read more: The value of emotional intelligence in business

The cracks will keep adding up until something shatters. They are manifesting themselves as three main emotional states, which most of us will recognise inside ourselves in some way.

1. We are overworked

Geoff McDonald began his career as a school teacher before landing a job at Unilever. He spent 25 years working his way through the ranks in London, Sydney and other parts of the world. He eventually became global vice president of HR. It was an intense, busy and high-pressure role.

Then, one day, Geoff’s world came crashing down. Early in the morning, he woke up in the grip of a massive panic attack. It was an experience unlike anything he’d felt before, and his first thought was that he was about to have a heart attack. His wife convinced him to go and see a doctor, where he was officially diagnosed with anxiety-fuelled depression. As a high-functioning executive at the top of his career, those were not words he expected to hear.

He worked hard at his ongoing recovery, aided by a strong support network. He remained in his high-powered role for another few years, navigating his way through the stresses and strains of senior leadership. The more he shared his story, the greater an impact he felt he could have.

In 2014, he left his job, and he is now on a mission to destigmatise conversations around the negative consequences of stress and overwork; and to kickstart a wider conversation about the way society is built and how businesses are incentivised solely on their financial performance.

When Geoff goes into organisations now, the number-one issue that people want to talk about is the pressure they feel to work more. “Everybody is talking about workload,” he says.

And it’s not just office workers who are overwhelmed – this is a trend that’s repeated in every industry. In 2023, the world’s most influential chef, René Redzepi, announced he was closing down his highly awarded restaurant, Noma, as the gruelling hours required by the chefs and hospitality workers to produce the quality their customers demanded were too much. “It’s unsustainable,” he said at the time. “We have to completely rethink the industry. We have to work in a different way.”

And you know what? He’s right.

2. We are disengaged

Our tenuous relationship with work is leading to a generally disenfranchised workforce who no longer feel that the sacrifices are worth it.

International forecaster Marian Salzman says one of the biggest shifts she predicts in the near future is a rethinking of the cornerstones of modern life. “We are questioning everything,” she wrote. “Employees (younger ones, especially) refuse to make the sacrifices earlier generations considered standard… The notion that worker drones should devote their lives to pumping up the profits of corporate executives and investors is increasingly less accepted.”