• Carra Santos
  • Posts
  • Ending 'overwork' culture is a sustainability strategy, too

Ending 'overwork' culture is a sustainability strategy, too

It's a little-known fact that 'overworking' is connected to climate change.

Author

Carra Santos
May 15, 2021

“Overwork, or get left behind” is the workplace phenomenon explored in this BBC article; an interesting read on the ‘always-on’ expectation. 

Did you know, though, that our culture of overworking can be just as connected to climate change as our energy emissions? 

It’s largely our lack of time outside work to cook, make, create, repair things, grow things, look after ourselves properly, and check in with each other, that increases our overconsumption, poor health, and demand on resources. 

While businesses are working hard on environmental compliances (the ‘E’ in ‘ESG’), resolving this burn-out culture would unleash many climate crisis solutions that contribute to health and wellbeing too (the ‘S’ in ‘ESG’).

For example:

  • If we had time to cook healthy food simply with local produce, we wouldn’t rely so much on convenience food, which increases carbon footprint and production of packaging and waste.

  • If we had time to repair broken things (and learn the skills to do so), we wouldn’t buy new ones by default, which adds to the waste mountains and toxic emissions.

  • If we had time to take care of our gardens and green spaces, we wouldn't pave them over, and block vital ecosystem services, like biodiversity, carbon-capturing plants, tree cooling effects and flood drainage, that provide our food, clean air and temperature regulation.

Not to mention that these solutions, in turn, reduce business risk in the long run: vision, values, efficiency, employee longevity, resource preservation, healthy employees, and so on. 

The writer, Bryan Lufkin, concludes:

"It has to be up to the workers to stop making burnout somehow desirable, and up to the companies to stop making the workers feel like they should.”

So how do we ‘un-blur' the lines between work and life, if we're locked into an 'eat, work, sleep' cycle?

Particularly if that cycle is framed as ambitious and impressive, so there’ll always be some person (or machine) waiting in the wings to nab that job...

Responsible employers will be ahead of the game on this topic. How are you addressing overwork culture as part of your sustainability strategy?

Don’t tell me; tell your friends. Break the feedback loop. End the cycle. Change the future of work for good.