How to Fix Your Company’s Culture of Overwork

A three-step process will make everyone less stressed and more productive.

March 18, 2024

Juan Moyano/Stocksy

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The new age of flexible of work has encouraged a culture of overwork, which is proving to be harmful to the mental health of employees. In her new book, Never Not Working, Malissa Clark offers a three-step process for organizations to reverse this unhealthy relationship: 1) Assess your company’s baseline level of overwork and its origins; 2) Plan for incremental change by targeting places where change will be most effective soonest; and 3) Execute a trial experiment, learn, and iterate.

Associate professor and head of the Healthy Work Lab at the University of Georgia, Malissa Clark, argues that in a post-pandemic work landscape that transcends buildings – and hours — the boundaries of professionalism and personal lives have been blurred. In her new book, Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business and How to Fix It (Harvard Business Review Press), Clark explains the current epidemic of overwork, what it looks like at its worst, and how a generation of employees have unknowingly let their work consume them. This excerpt, which is lightly edited, outlines clear steps that organizations can take to correct a culture of overwork for the betterment of their employees.

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Malissa Clark is an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Georgia, where she leads the Healthy Work Lab. She is one of the world’s leading scholars on workaholism, overwork, burnout, and employee well-being. In addition to serving as an expert consultant to many organizations on these issues, Clark and her work have been featured in outlets including the New York Times, the BBC, Time, Glamour, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and others.