“Dying to get to work or getting to work to die?”

Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance – and What We Can Do About It. Jeffrey Pfeffer. New York, New York: Harper Business, 2018, 272 pp., ISBN 13: 978-0062800923
Why isn’t there a sustainability plan for humans in their workplace? Almost every serious multinational company has a sustainability policy concerning the environmental pollution. Companies are obliged to make EIR (Environmental Impact Reports). However, when it comes to the human resources, no policies are set into place to protect the physical and mental wellbeing of their employees. If there are attempts made to ban toxic products and processes, why isn`t there a protection against toxic management systems?This is one of the challenging questions Jeffrey Pfeffer presents in his latest book “Dying for the paycheck”. No, there is no error, the title indeed is “Dying for the paycheck”. Pfeffer explains his provocative title in an interview with Dan Schawbel: “Two colleagues and I estimated that about one-half of the 120,000 excess deaths from workplace exposures annually was preventable” (retrieved from Dan Schawbel personal branding blog: http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/jeffrey-pfeffer-employers-care-health-employees/). These numbers are being put into perspective by comparison to 27 European countries and Pfeffer’s conclusion is that by estimate, 60,000, or half the death, and about 63 billion, or one-third of the excess costs, might be preventable (Pfeffer, chapter 2, page 6).

Why isn't there a sustainability plan for humans in their workplace? Almost every serious multinational company has a sustainability policy concerning the environmental pollution. Companies are obliged to make EIR (Environmental Impact Reports). However, when it comes to the human resources, no policies are set into place to protect the physical and mental wellbeing of their employees. If there are attempts made to ban toxic products and processes, why isn`t there a protection against toxic management systems? This is one of the challenging questions Jeffrey Pfeffer presents in his latest book "Dying for the paycheck". No, there is no error, the title indeed is "Dying for the paycheck". Pfeffer explains his provocative title in an interview with Dan Schawbel: "Two colleagues and I estimated that about one-half of the 120,000 excess deaths from workplace exposures annually was preventable" (retrieved from Dan Schawbel personal branding blog: http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/ jeffrey-pfeffer-employers-care-health-employees/). These numbers are being put into perspective by comparison to 27 European countries and Pfeffer's conclusion is that by estimate, 60,000, or half the death, and about 63 billion, or one-third of the excess costs, might be preventable (Pfeffer, chapter 2, page 6).

Toxic workplace
But it is not only the physical aspect of health. After all, we live in the 21st century. The risks identified by Pfeffer that are predictors to stress or heart diseases are among others: high risks being laid off; not having health insurance; irregular work shifts; working more than 40 hours weekly; confronting job insecurity; facing work-life conflicts; having low control over one's job and job environment; facing high job demands; having low levels of social support at work.
Looking for causes of these phenomena, Pfeffer mentions the so-called Gig economy. The Gig economy fosters contingent workers (freelancers independent contractors). It is predicted that in the US in 2020, the workforce will consist of 40% of contingency workers. The uncertainty of employees in their hunt for their next "Gig" creates a lot of stress © Frans Hikspoors, 2019 Frans Hikspoors, Dr., Lecturer, Windesheim University of Applied Science, the Netherlands. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. and can result in bad health. Modern working environment is characterized by loss of autonomy and control as a result of higher computer control levels. It is beyond doubt that lack of control and autonomy eventually can lead to higher burnout and stress levels.
Pfeffer concluded that job insecurity affected both physical and mental health with, not surprisingly, larger effects on mental health outcomes. One review of the empirical research on the effects of job insecurity on health concluded that "reductions in job insecurity should be a point of intervention for government policies aimed at improving population health and reducing health inequalities".
Pfeffer argues that many modern management practices are toxic to employees -hurting engagement, increasing turnover, and destroying their physical and emotional health -and to company performance. By constantly downsizing, workloads that in the past were handled by numerous employees now it is done by one or two persons. The consequences for these few people are enormous: like 60-pound weight increase, alcohol and/or drug addiction, severe depressions, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.

No trade-off
When it comes to the relation between health expenses on behalf of their employees and corporate profitability quality and productivity, one would expect that companies that don't pay that much in their employee's health would have better figures on profitability. The opposite is true, underestimating the gains that can be won with a sound health policy, most employers neglect the positive effect that a healthy employee has on costs on lost production (unhealthy employees are less productive) turnover (if an employee leaves the company there are enormous costs on getting a replacement). That would be someone who is equally productive as the one that left the company. In his book "The Human Equation: Building profits by putting people first", Pfeffer covered the relation profitability and interest in people. If the interest of neither the employer nor employee is served, this is indeed a lose/lose situation.

Why don`t leave
There is one question that Pfeffer addresses, which is quite obvious. If people experience a toxic work environment or a toxic work culture… Why don`t they leave the company they work for? There has to be a lot of dissonance reduction to combine two contradictory notions: • I am working in a toxic company; • I don`t leave this company.
The question is what the reasons of people are to stay? There are a number of reasons: economics (people have to pay their bills): some refer to this as "golden handcuffs" (because of money people stick to their jobs). Prestigious and interesting work: some people simply overestimate the prestige of their company and the projected career possibilities by staying in their toxic jobs.
When people intend to leave jobs that are not good for them processes like pride and ego play an important role. Wanting to proof competence (I can do this job) or ego (Am I not good enough?) are important in the final decision. Last but not least, commitment and rationalization are processes not to be underestimated when people stay in their job, despite their knowledge that this work jeopardizes their health. Commitment is a process where people feel they must be consistent. People also don't like to admit they made a bad decision, so people rather stay in their toxic environment than admit they made a bad decision.