Is Well-Being A "Right" Or A "Perk?"

Jennifer Moss has done a lot of work on this particular topic, including being mentioned in this WorkLife article on it.

Certainly I agree with the quote, and I think most reasonable people would agree with the quote. However, if you look at most job descriptions or job posts, you will see “well-being” aspects listed underneath “Benefits” or “Perks,” not as a fundamental aspect of the job. And usually when you see a “well-being benefit,” it’s like periodic free yoga, or $10 off a gym membership. And those things are certainly nice, but they don’t get to the heart of well-being at all.

Now, from an executive perspective or a founder perspective, a lot of this is utterly fluffy bullshit and they don’t want to be accountable to or responsible for employee “well-being,” because that can be a slippery slope and potentially distract from productivity, which is what they claim to seek when in reality they seek the biggest exit possible from the company down the road.

Most employers, or even VP-level guys/gals I’ve interacted with, will say this: the thing they can do is consistently employ you if you’re good at your job. That is their part of the “well-being pie.” They don’t want to go beyond that, because it gets complicated and messy and there’s too many distractions from core work responsibilities. I get it. A lot of people who become SVPs in an org are very used to wanting heads-down drones as employees. Talking about mental health and loneliness and depression and isolation and apathy? No. Get your work done. If we can keep paying you, we will. Isn’t that a “benefit” too, Charlie?

That’s usually the attitude.

The bulk of that article I linked above talks about “toxic productivity,” which feels like a weird concept since everything and its mother is now labeled as “toxic” in some way. The term “toxic productivity” means we run around doing a lot of things, usually worthless things, and it exhausts us and burns us out and yet we keep doing it.

That one is hard to change, because American white-collar work is built upon the idea of things constantly being in motion — new tasks, new projects, new initiatives. Usually they’re all bullshit unless they directly face revenue, but perpetual motion is very important to the idea of American white-collar employment.

I don’t think we could change “toxic productivity,” because someone will always email you at 3pm on a Friday of a holiday weekend asking you to “jump on this.” It’s just how that particular cookie always crumbles.

The best path through is to either (a) freelance / work for yourself, which is very challenging in other ways, or (b) find a place that has a very simple work ethos, i.e. do your stuff and you’re done for the day, and if you do your stuff in three hours, we still pay you for eight and you can do side projects and whatever if you want.

Again, most companies hire from bullet points, which implies that they value task work above all. So, if you do the tasks, you should be free, as long as the tasks are done well. We can avoid “toxic productivity” by just not slamming people with worthless shit so long as the tasks are done.

That unfortunately goes against a lot of managerial thinking, however.

I think workplaces need a greater focus on well-being in the sense that the workplace itself needs to realize that, if they’re going to do layoffs twice/year, they can’t expect diehard loyalty and 11pm email answering. They need to realize it’s a means to an end for that person, because the end could come in two weeks, so why not let them go to the gym mid-day so long as their tasks are getting done? Why not let them day-drink so long as their work is done? That’s a way to foster well-being, too: lay off the gas pedal for people that you might let go in a month anyway.

Thoughts?