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American Morning
America the Workaholic Nation
Aired May 16, 2001 - 10:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: While people around the world fight to balance their work and their personal lives, Americans seem to fare the worst in this battle. A new survey indicates nearly a majority of U.S. workers feel either overworked or overwhelmed.
CNN's Kathy Slobogin takes a look at this problem and its affect on individuals and their employers.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have no, absolutely no personal life at all. I just work. That's all I do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I probably work maybe 50 hours a week.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It can be 40, which is nice, or it can be more like 80.
KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We have become a workaholic nation. American workers put in the longest hours of any industrialized nation, surpassing the next closest country, Japan, by nearly two full work weeks a year. Now a new study finds we're paying a price.
ELLEN GALINSKY, FAMILIES AND WORK INSTITUTE: Nearly half of the U.S. work force, 46 percent, feel overworked in one way or another. This study is a clarion call for all of us, companies and individuals, to look at how we're working.
SLOBOGIN: The Families & Work Institute's survey of 1,000 U.S. workers found that 28 percent often felt overworked, 28 percent felt overwhelmed by how much work they had and 29 percent felt they had no time to step back and reflect on their work. Women felt more overworked than men, baby boomers more than Gen X-ers or older workers. Although the survey found that employees on average would like to work about a 35 hour work week, for many that's a distant fantasy.
Twenty-four percent of American workers work 50 or more hours a week. Twenty-two percent work six to seven days a week. A quarter don't take the vacation time they're entitled to. But Ellen Galinsky says it's not just the hours.
GALINSKY: When you feel pressured and pushed, when you feel not respected, when you have tension at work, when you feel that the work that you're doing isn't of any real value, that it's low value work, all of those lead us to feeling more overworked and sizable proportions of the U.S. work force are having these feelings.
SLOBOGIN: The survey found those who felt overworked were more likely to neglect themselves, less likely to feel successful in their personal and family relationships.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel tired and I feel like I'm juggling five or six different balls in the air at one time between work and family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You feel stressed, frazzled. You feel like you're missing out on a lot of your life.
SLOBOGIN: What's more, the survey found overwork can lead to serious on the job consequences. Over worked employees are more likely to look for a new job, feel angry at their employers and make mistakes. Seventeen percent of those who feel over worked report often making mistakes on the job compared to only one percent of those who don't feel over worked.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: And Kathy Slobogin joins us now from our Washington bureau. Good morning. Good to see you.
SLOBOGIN: Good morning.
HARRIS: Kathy, now you said in the piece that overwork could affect businesses' bottom line with their higher costs. What about the impact on workers and their families?
SLOBOGIN: Well, the survey found that people that are overworked feel that they have more conflict, more work-family conflict. There are negative health effects, more, things like sleep loss. They also were, they felt less successful in their family and personal relationships. All of these things can be linked to depression and the World Health Organization recently reported that by the year 2020, they expect clinical depression to outrank cancer and be second only to heart disease as a cause of death of disability. So it can be huge problems for employees.
And as far as families, this same Institute did a survey of children last year where they asked what is the one thing you would like to change about your parents' jobs. And the most frequent response was that my parents be less tired and less stressed out from their work.
HARRIS: You know, I've heard that from my kids. I know, I've heard the same thing. So, what are some of the factors that lead to feeling overworked?
SLOBOGIN: Well, first of all, people are working more than they want to work. Nearly half of the U.S. work force says that. And overwhelmingly, 75 percent of them say that they don't feel they have any control over that. The survey found that people are more likely to feel overworked if they're working long hours for what they call external reasons, for example, your boss forces you to work more hours than you want to. Whereas people that worked for personal reasons like to achieve financial goals or to advance their careers are less likely to feel overworked.
The survey also found that multi-tasking and multiple interruptions are a big problem. Nearly half of U.S. workers say that they feel they're asked to do too many things at one time or that there are so many interruptions that they can't get their work done.
HARRIS: It's just a common way of life nowadays, so I guess we have to find a way to get used to it. Kathy Slobogin in Washington, thanks much. We'll talk to you later on.
SLOBOGIN: Sure.
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