Don’t glory in the tiredness epidemic in our offices

It’s time to stop thinking of fatigue as going that ‘extra mile’ – but as a sign of bureaucratic bloat in the workplace that needs addressing

A‘Bragging about not needing to rest might be done because it implies toughness’

re you busy? Complain about being tired next time someone asks how you are and you will give them enough of a hint that yes, you are. Grumbling about fatigue not only suggests that you have been pretty busy – a big thumbs-up to that status symbol – but also that you are up for completely burning yourself out too. Bingo! Your status has risen.

This societal obsession with exhaustion and overwork was highlighted by Wizz Air’s chief executive Jozsef Varadi last week, when he told staff to go “the extra mile” when tired so that the airline doesn’t have to cancel flights. Explaining to workers that the airline now needs to “take down the fatigue rate,” he argued that “we cannot run this business when every fifth person reports sickness because the person is fatigued”. After all, he pointed out, we are “all fatigued”.

Maybe we are all fatigued, but now might finally be the time to question whether that’s a good thing. For too long, working through tiredness has been associated with productivity and going that “extra mile”.

Margaret Thatcher reputedly ran the country on four hours’ sleep a night. Donald Trump proudly claimed that he only slept for three hours, asking on his campaign trail: “How does somebody that’s sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with someone that’s sleeping three or four?” Fashion designer Tom Ford is said to sleep less than four hours a night, keeping a stack of Post-it notes by his bed to jot down ideas that occur to him should he wake up.

So glorified are successful chest-beating insomniacs that The Wall Street Journal once dubbed these types the “sleepless elite” in a piece exploring “why some people can run on little sleep and get so much done”. While scientists agree that a small proportion of the population are natural short-sleepers, they warn that only five out of every 100 people who think they fall into this category actually do. The others are just sleep-deprived. Bragging about not needing to rest might be done because it implies a certain toughness and commitment to work, but in reality a lack of sleep makes most people short-tempered, run-down and unproductive. The glorification of sleep deprivation and overwork has been going on for too long. This argument is hardly new, but the topic of productivity and how to achieve it has never been more relevant as the world questions working life post-pandemic.

Poor productivity in Britain has been a problem for too long and output per worker continues to lag behind other G7 countries. A four-day week experiment is now taking place with 70 companies to see if shorter hours might be what makes people work harder. Businesses taking part are testing different ways of boosting productivity, such as asking staff to use mini traffic-lights to show colleagues whether they have the time to engage in small talk (red means buzz off, green means chat away) or telling teams to take a break every 52 minutes.

While mini traffic-lights and a four-day week are unlikely to catch on any time soon, there could be lessons learnt from this trial which change our view about what productive looks like. Countless studies have shown that those who are happier at work also do a better job.

Research by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and BT found in 2019 that workers are 13pc more productive when happy, working faster and completing more sales in the same amount of time as less satisfied peers. Yet many companies have misunderstood what happiness at work means. It is not the same long hours, but with ping pong tables and free food. As one parent put it to The New York Times last month: “Having cereal in the break room doesn’t make up for not being able to pick up your kids”.

Instead, business leaders ought to stop lauding fatigue as evidence of a good work ethic. Rather than telling everyone to push through their yawns, Wizz Air’s Varadi should have looked at what the deeper problem is. A good proportion of people who grumble about tiredness at work are probably uninspired by their job, but too exhausted or stressed to really do much about it.

For those calling in sick due to tiredness, the problem could be much more serious.

Many will be overwhelmed and fed up with working for companies that are severely understaffed. Seeing that fatigue is often met with a gold star from the boss – evidence of going that “extra mile” – few will feel confident enough to say anything. Despite all the chatter about new ways of working post-lockdowns, presenteeism prevails. Tiredness and overdoing it continue to be associated with productivity and value, but are more likely a symptom of the bureaucratic bloat that now menaces most offices.

Wizz Air is wrong to treat tiredness like a badge of honour, but the airline’s message is a sign of our times. Complaining about being tired is a boring obsession of modern working life which too many of us have bought into out of a sense of helplessness. It is finally time to react to persistent tiredness as what it is: a sign that something is wrong with working culture.