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).
