Workplace Suffering: Is Management to Blame?
In "I Have a Lot of Pain at Work," Jean-Michel Carré seeks to understand the rise of workplace "discomfort," this "obscure object of hatred and desire" that causes so much physical and emotional suffering.
Increasingly Oppressive Management
The film highlights the hardening of management practices. Some companies do not hesitate to ask their managers to instill fear and encourage individualism.
In this context, what about the team-building sports seminars that are proliferating? A practice intended to unite teams, according to some, aims to instill a competitive spirit, according to others. Seminars that sometimes insidiously encroach on private life. Under the pretext that the training takes place on Monday in an Alpine resort, employees are "invited" to come from Saturday. What about the weekend, normally reserved for the private sphere?
We are now in the "TTU" (very very urgent). This mention accompanies many emails today, forcing employees to constantly work in a state of urgency. A common practice that puts employees under constant pressure.
Frustrations and Feelings of Failure
Workplace discomfort is not the sole domain of blue-collar workers and low-skilled professions. Managers are also affected. "In large companies, if there is a freedom of initiative apparently expected from employees, the means are not given to assume it. Management assigns a budget. If the project is not feasible, they are imperturbably answered: "Here is your budget… Figure it out." Frustrations, feelings of impossibility and likely failure," explains the director. But their stress is less visible. As a manager of a multinational company confides, "you can't project the image of a stressed and tired person, it penalizes our rating. So, most of us run on coffee and cigarettes to cope. Others even resort to illegal drugs."
If unhappiness is associated with work, it is precisely because it is an essential condition for happiness. Indeed, in a INSEE study of 6,000 people, work comes in second as a condition of happiness, after health but before family, money, and love. The world of work is becoming increasingly dehumanized, leading to suffering and frustration among employees who, on the contrary, expect recognition for the quality of their work, an essential moral reward. Proof of this is that they place the notion of work before money as a condition of fulfillment.
Being unhappy at work has dramatic consequences for the individual. "If specialists affirm that work contributes to the psychological structuring of every individual, the flow of patients they find in their consultations confirms an increasingly important state of suffering, proof that the demands on employees today have no limits," emphasizes Jean-Michel Carré. It is generally the body that gives the alarm signal: eczema, insomnia, cardiac alerts, ulcers… are the physical consequences of moral distress. (See the box opposite).
Workplace Suffering in Figures*
> In ten years, musculoskeletal disorders have increased from 1,000 to 35,000 per year.
> In 2005, there were 760,000 workplace accidents in France. Two people die in workplace accidents every day.
> Two million employees suffer from mental harassment and abuse, 500,000 are victims of sexual harassment.
> The annual cost of workplace accidents, occupational diseases, and mistreatment amounts to 70 billion euros for the state and businesses.
> Over 5 years, more than 1,000 suicide attempts have been recorded in the workplace in France, of which 47% resulted in death.
> 10% of social security spending is directly related to occupational diseases.
> Eczema, insomnia, cardiac alerts, musculoskeletal disorders, ulcers, cancers, depression, suicide attempts are the most frequent consequences of mistreatment in the workplace.
> During the last jurisdictional year, the labor courts dealt with 250,000 disputes.
*Figures provided by the Ministry of Labor
Jean-Michel Carré has produced a rich film, alternating testimonies from employees and researchers (psychoanalysts, economists, sociologists, political scientists…), advertisements, current affairs images, and excerpts from satirical films. "Shock" words that raise awareness of a profound malaise at work. While the film raises real problems, solutions remain to be found.
Published March 11, 2008
lentreprise.com
