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 Humanities and Social Science Research; Vol. 5, No. 1; 2022
ISSN 2576-3024   E-ISSN 2576-3032

https://doi.org/10.30560/hssr.v5n1p1

1 Published by IDEAS SPREAD

Efficiency, Effectiveness and Wellness in the post-COVID Workplace

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”---- Peter Drucker

Peter Kalina1 & Yvette Panno2

1 Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN, USA
2 Human Resources, USTC Corporation, Edison, NJ, USA

Correspondence: Peter Kalina, MD, MBA, FACR. Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN, USA. 
E-mail: kalina.peter mayo.edu

Received: February 17, 2022; Accepted: March 3, 2022; Published: March 7, 2022

Abstract

In 1840, factory owners were compelled by organized labor to limit their workday to eight hours. Subsequent to 
this action, management discovered that output actually increased, while mistakes and accidents decreased. In 
1916, the Adamson Act established an eight-hour day for railroad workers. This was the first federal law that 
regulated the hours of workers in private companies. The eight-hour day became a standard for most workers in 
1937, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was first proposed under the New Deal (Samuel, 2000).

Keywords: COVID, workplace, wellness

Before COVID changed perceptions about how people could accomplish their tasks, employees were expected to 
put in full days at the office, and then expected to respond to after hour emails. They were expected to willingly 
donate nights, weekends, and vacation time; all without complaining (Carmichael, 2015). The organizational 
charts of many companies have work cascading down the organizational pyramid from top to bottom. Based on 
that concept, we work long hours because authority figures tell us to. Managers want their employees to be 
“Humble, Hungry, and Smart” (Lecioni, 2016). The problem with “hungry” is that a work ethic equating with 
excess work hours (or the perception of busyness) is an old-school management philosophy that is not sustainable. 
It leads to overwork, diminished effectiveness, and burnout. That’s not to say we can’t work very hard or for very 
long hours. We can. We just can’t do it routinely. One 60-hour work week in order to resolve a specific crisis is 
quite different from chronic overwork. Predictable, required time off makes teams more productive (Perlow, 2009).

Why do people overwork? Potential drivers may include economic incentive, corporate culture, or the technology 
that always people to keep the office just a click away. Perhaps it is the psychology of work: we log excess hours 
due to a mix of inner drivers (ambition, machismo, greed, anxiety, guilt, enjoyment, pride, short-term rewards, 
desire or need to prove we are relevant, or perhaps a sense of duty). We have all worked with people for whom it 
is abundantly clear that, for them, their work life is actually less stressful than their home life. For them, the 
workplace is somewhere they feel in control. Some may not realize the unintended consequences of overwork is, 
do not believe it, or consciously choose not to act on the knowledge (Carmichael 2015, Kalina 2021).

If there are silver linings in the post-COVID workplace, one may be that we have confirmed a previous suspicion 
- overwork doesn’t result in more output, or better output. Managers were unable to distinguish between employees 
that had actually worked a full 80-hour week from those pretending to. (Reid 2015) demonstrated no evidence that 
employees pretending to work 80 hours accomplished less while those actually overworking accomplished more.
In fact, overwork harms employees which, in turn, harms their organizations. Overwork impairs interpersonal 
communication skills, judgment, and ability to manage emotional reactions. It can lead to stress, exhaustion, 
burnout, poor sleep, depression, drinking, and heart disease. These unintended consequences affect the company 
bottom line by negatively impacting our customer interactions along with increasing absenteeism, turnover, and 
health insurance costs (Virtanen, 2015). If for no other altruistic reasons, wellness must be prioritized due to the 
resultant improved customer outcomes and improved business bottom-line.

The worldwide human and economic toll of COVID-19 is still being determined. People suffered. Revenues and 
operating margins declined. Our workforce, infrastructure, and supply chains were strained. The pandemic 
profoundly transformed workplaces around the world, catalyzing unprecedented acceleration in change 
management processes. In 2022, the unintended consequences of COVID-19 are the 800-lb gorilla present in every 



hssr.ideasspread.org   Humanities and Social Science Research Vol. 5, No. 1; 2022 

 2 Published by IDEAS SPREAD 
 

boardroom. If organizations genuinely desire well-balanced, healthy, and happy employees they must prioritize 
work-life integration and assure employee wellness is a leadership priority. 

 

References 

Carmichael, S. (2015). Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies HBR 8/19/15. 

Kalina, P. (2021). Why do we work: Motive portends outcome. International Journal of Business Management 
and Marketing, 6, 39-41. 

Lecioni, P. (2015). The Ideal Team Player John Wiley & Sons. 2016 Hoboken, N J. 

Perlow, L., & Porter, J. (2009). Making Time off Predictable—and Required. Harvard Business Review, 87(10), 
102-9, 142. 

Reid, E. (2015). Why Some Men Pretend to Work 80-Hour Weeks HBR April 28, 2015. 

Samuel, H. (2000). Troubled passage: The labor movement and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Monthly Labor 
Review.  

Virtanen, et al. (2015). Long working hours and alcohol use: systematic review and meta-analysis of published 
studies and unpublished individual participant data. BMJ, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7772 

 
Copyrights 

Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. 

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 


