In 2022’s The Burnout Epidemic, Jennifer Moss offered advice for organizations whose employees were running on empty, delivering what PW’s review called a “timely and practical plea for more balance.” Moss spoke with PW about her new book Why Are We Here?(Harvard Business Review, Dec.), which addresses the meaning of purpose in the new world of work.
Your title asks a big question. Where did it come from?
I interviewed 128 Uber and Lyft drivers over three years. They’d had jobs with prestige and status, they were making good money, but they made this move [to driving for rideshare companies] because we’re all having this existential crisis, all at once. We’re having a catalyst moment: What is the point of going to work? What’s the point of being a leader? Why go to a workplace that’s toxic? This is why the Great Resignation happened. Not because people wanted more pay, but because we’d seen the finitude of our lives.
We no longer identify with our work, and that empowers us. Leaders and organizations have to use new strategies to engage and retain people.
Work, you write, is “fundamentally broken.” How did it get this way?
Work has been broken for a while. It hasn’t worked for women in a long time, because we as a society haven’t figured out supportive policies. The root cause of chronic stress is not being rewarded or recognized. We have to solve for pay equity. Too many companies are care-washing: they offer resilience training, but staff still has to answer emails on vacation. This isn’t enough after Covid.
How does Covid figure in?
During Covid we jumped a timeline—we’re in the multiverse now. I remember what it’s like to be able to pick up my kid from school, to not have to commute. You can’t remove our memories like in Men in Black. People now have a frame of reference for what work should be like, and they’re not responding well to companies trying to go back to the way it was before. People are very tired and stressed. It’s been five years since Covid began, so we’re no longer in a state of urgency, but we’re still acting like we are. We haven’t gotten rid of bad habits like over-meeting. We have to think about what needs changing: What is the permanent shift? What’s okay to we return to? What’s the new paradigm of work?
Are any companies addressing this well?
[The software company]Atlassian is. They acknowledged that teams being together does make a difference, but they figured out how to do it in a different way. They have satellite offices, welcoming environments where workers can collaborate and connect without just going into the office to do the same thing as they do from home. Executives are roaming, so the younger cohort of workers who felt like their careers were atrophying, like there was no career path, now have access to leadership. It makes being in person valuable.
