The well being of workers and the health of organizations are inextricably connected. More than two-in-five workers surveyed by the American Psychological Association in 2022 reported that health and safety concerns negatively affect their stress level at work.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, our work weeks have gotten longer, while our boundaries between our personal and professional lives dissolved. Workers around the world are putting in an average of 9.2 hours of unpaid overtime per week – up from 7.3 hours just a year ago. Recent research shows that people working more than 54 hours a week are at major risk of dying from overwork. Experts estimate that overwork kills 750,000 people per year.

For years, “hustle culture” has glorified sacrificing sleep and work-life balance in favor of production and superficial success. Tricia Hershey, the Founder of The Nap Ministry and author of Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto has stated that “grind culture has stolen your imagination. Our thinking is very limited because we are deeply disconnected, exhausted, sleep deprived and don’t believe we are worthy of anything unless we burn ourselves out to ‘accomplish’ it.”

In this episode we dive into two human needs in Protection from Harm: safety and security. A healthy workplace prioritizes workplace physical security and psychological safety. In psychologically safe teams, members feel accepted and respected, and won’t be punished for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. We discuss four strategies that can be used by organizations and companies to protect their workers from physical, emotional, and psychological harm.

Protection from Harm is one of five essentials that support workplaces as engines of well-being and positive mental health. These essentials are described in the U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being, published in October 2022.

Over the course of this season, your co-hosts Kevin and Amy break down the components of this Framework and provide ways we can move towards putting these words to action within our workplaces.

Here are the readings we reference in this episode:

Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being: https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/workplace-well-being/index.html

The American Psychological Association 2022 Work and Well-being Survey results: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2022/07/workplaces-mental-health-supports

Kahn, William A. (1 December 1990). "Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work" Academy of Management Journal: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256287

Edmondson, Amy (1 June 1999). "Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams" (PDF). Administrative Science Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel, S. M. (2008). Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1045–1062. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013262

Surowiecki, James. The Cult of Overwork. The New Yorker. January 19, 2014.