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Beyond Nine To Five: Is Working To Excess Bad For Health?

Published Online:19 Sep 2016https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2015.0115

Abstract

This study investigated whether two sides of working to excess, namely working long hours and a compulsive work mentality (workaholism), are detrimental for employee health by using biomarkers of metabolic syndrome, a direct precursor of cardiovascular diseases. In addition, we examined if working to excess has the same health outcomes for employees who enjoy their work versus employees who do not. Despite the common sense belief that working long hours is bad for health, we did not find a relationship between work hours and risk factors of metabolic syndrome (RMS; e.g. high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels) in a study among 763 employees. Instead, we found that workaholism was positively related to RMS, but only when work engagement was low. Surprisingly, we found that workaholism was negatively related to RMS in the highly engaged group. When further exploring mediation mechanisms, we found that workaholism, but not work hours, was related to reduced subjective well-being (e.g. depressive feelings, sleep problems), which in turn elicited a physical health impairment process. We also found that, compared with nonengaged workaholics, engaged workaholics had more resources, which they may use to halt the health impairment process. Our findings underscore that not long hours per se, but rather a compulsive work mentality is associated with severe health risks, and only for employees who are not engaged at work. Work engagement may actually protect workaholics from severe health risks.

Those of us that trained for a career in academia could not help but hear the phrase, “Publish or perish!” Having had that idea drilled into our heads as graduate students, many of us became habitualized to working extremely long hours. Labeled by our friends and family as “workaholics,” many of us have also become accustomed to hearing a myriad of warnings such as, “keep working like that and the only place it'll get you is an early grave”! But is that truly the case? Do excessive work hours really make one a “workaholic”? And are excessive work hours or workaholism necessarily deleterious to one's health? Research addressing such questions is equivocal, in part because objective health measures are hard to come by and in part because it's often difficult to clearly separate out the effects of workaholism from work hours. However, in “Beyond nine to five” the authors have—using rigorous methods—managed to address both of these problems, and in the process, generate a number of important discoveries. If you are a workaholic that loves his or her work, then read on for some encouraging news… But regardless of how many hours you put in each week, the insights gleaned from this analysis should not be overlooked as they have some important implications for management theory in general, and theories of work stress in particular.

-Peter Bamberger, Action Editor

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