Are you job-obsessed? New Zealand joins global look at work addiction

Are you always on?

Peering at your phone, sneaking to the loo to send emails, uncomfortable on holiday if the wifi is dodgy, staring blankly at your family, knowing they just said something, but your phone just pinged so you have no idea what?

You are showing signs of being a workaholic, traits you share with around 1 in 10 others. It’s such a big thing, there’s a Workaholics Anonymous, which has a 12-step global group programme for recovering workaholics.

It’s such a big thing, Massey University School of Management Professor Jane Parker is part of a global study investigating it, along with people’s thoughts, emotions and behaviours around their jobs.

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Dr Edyta Charzyńska from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, and Dr Paweł Atroszko from the University of Gdańsk, Poland, are leading research in more than 50 countries, across six continents.

The anonymous study concerns people’s attitudes to the jobs that they perform, with research results published in scientific journals. It will be impossible to identify individual respondents.

Parker, who has the task of finding 200 Kiwi participants, tells Stuff the information will be invaluable for individuals and companies, and will hopefully make more clear exactly what work addiction is.

“What I’m hoping is, the survey will help us to define how people see addiction rather than us ‘guestimate’ constructs and then say, ‘Do you do this, do you do that?’,” she says.

“I am hoping they’ll say, ‘Well, I don’t really see this as addiction,’ or ‘Yes, I do see it’ because it’s a situational and, to some extent, perceptual matter.

“It can be driven by so many factors, and that’s where we really need to get on top of it, with some evidence.

“People may be able to reflect more on how they engage with work and take stock if they feel they need to.”

Employment agreements in Aotearoa set a basic ceiling of 40 hours per week (excluding overtime), unless agreed otherwise. In France it’s 35 hours, in Australia 38, while in China it’s 48.

While globally the average number of hours that people work is reducing, New Zealanders still have comparatively long work weeks – about 2.3 hours more than the OECD weekly average.

While those figures suggest a good many Kiwis are keen, if not addicted, to working, Parker wants the survey to provide proof.

It’s reported around 8% of Norwegians and Hungarians are ‘addicted’ to work, the tentative estimate for the US is around 10%.

Professionals and those in vocational roles have comparatively long working hours, so the survey could reflect differences in people’s commitment and non-delegation tendencies rather than an actual addiction to working.

“More needs to be learnt about how and if work addiction levels can be linked to factors such as differing socio-cultural norms, individuals’ characteristics, and economic conditions,” Parker says.

“Particularly when they are paid at lower wage rates, staff are driven to work longer hours and/or take on multiple jobs to make ends meet.

“I’ve talked to cleaners who are on to their third or fourth job for the day, and they’re certainly not addicted to work!

“In such cases, economic necessity rather than a particular mindset about work appears to be the key force behind working longer hours or working harder.”

It depends on the nature of the work too, Parker says. Health workers tend to feel they must provide a service.

Some work is innately appealing. We see this in various professions and vocations where there’s often a strong commitment element to the work.

“It’s not about extrinsic rewards, it’s intrinsic satisfaction. It’s pretty difficult to walk away, for example, as a health professional from a situation just because the clock chimes five.”

It is hoped the survey will help companies understand what makes workers tick, how to spot work prone to overworking, and be aware when staff are fatigued.

One potential issue is when a worker feels they are doing a great job, only to be asked to cut back. It is a delicate situation, Parker says.

“For people who place a lot of value on their work effort, then it could be seen as a criticism of them, being told not to do that or to scale it back,” she says.

“If you’re a high performer and you’re deriving a lot of satisfaction from what you’re doing and you don’t think you’ve got a problem.”

Wellington clinical psychologist Dougal Sutherland of Umbrella Wellbeing says those who work hard often know it, and in focussing on work they can let other areas of their life slip.

“The thing that people around them might notice is that those people are sort of mentally not present,” he says.

“We’ve probably all had that experience where we’ve tried to talk to somebody who’s physically there, but mentally they are somewhere else, so they’re a bit distracted.

“They might keep flicking back to their phone or to the device, which is probably a good indication that even though they’re physically at home, they’re mentally still at work,” he says.

Some might want to find ways to deal with that, while others are happiest when they are working in their day job and can see family life as an intrusion.

“Chief executives are often in that zone. They feel a real strong sense of meaning and purpose in their lives from their work and have a real commitment,” Sutherland says.

“There are definitely people that are absolutely in that zone and they probably are really successful at work.”

But that is not all roses, high salaries and living happily ever after, he warns.

“Their whole reason for being is so strongly tied up with their work that it’s almost impossible for them to break out. That’s great to a point for them, but the risks are that they may not be so successful in other areas of their life, like relationships.

“That’s a pretty fragile position … if you lose your job or you can’t fulfil it, you get sick, you get restructured, then it can have a pretty massive influence on your well-being because now your one sole reason for being has been taken away or reduced.

“You’ve put all your eggs in one basket and when that basket breaks all your eggs shatter. It’s not a particularly resilient position to be [in].”

Sutherland is aware more and more people are saying they’ve had enough of work.

“It’s as if, ‘I’ve realised that actually, there’s more to life than work and I don’t want to do it.’ The overworking realise, ‘I’ve just kind of ended up working, working, working, and I’ve become addicted to it’.

“At the other end of the spectrum, there’s people going ‘actually I don’t want to do this, I’m going to cut back on work’. So it’s the full gamut really, of those between those two ends of the spectrum.”