Sylvia Ann Hewlett

By Sylvia Ann Hewlett
President, Center for Work-Life Policy

Joe rose up through the ranks to become a managing director at a major bank. He terms himself an “extreme earner.” Instead of his workload lessening as he climbed the corporate ladder, it got more and more hectic with six to seven days a week becoming the norm. He keeps an apartment in New York for the two days a week he is there and he’s on the road another three to four days. He sees his wife and three children on the weekends when he goes home to Connecticut. Even when he is home, he gets calls in the middle of the night on Saturdays and Sundays and flies out to see clients at a moment’s notice. Does this sound familiar?

Across the face of the economy, extreme jobs are proliferating. In 2006, the Center for Work-Life Policy published a study on this phenomenon. See “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek” (Harvard Business Review, December 2006) and “Seduction and Risk: The Emergence of Extreme Jobs,” (Center for Work-Life Policy, December 2006). The research was sponsored by American Express, BP plc, ProLogis and UBS with a grant for case studies and tool kits from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

In our research, we consider an extreme job one in which a person works at least 60 hours per week and deals with five or more additional work performance pressures. Using this definition, we find that 21 percent of high earning workers in the US have extreme jobs. In the global companies, this figure rises to 45 percent. Extreme work is more prevalent in North America (56 percent) than in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (44 percent). They are held by fifty-five-year-olds as well as thirty-five-year-olds. Extreme jobs are not a young person’s game or a short-term sprint anymore. They now characterize the beginning, middle, and tail end of many careers.

In spite of the demands, the extreme work model is very rewarding. Professionals love their extreme jobs. They love the thrill, the meaning, the challenge, the oversized compensation packages and the brilliant colleagues. They are not only committed; they are devoted. A majority of those we surveyed are exhilarated by their jobs and feel that the pressures at work are freely chosen or self-inflicted. But, in that lies the danger. Extreme professionals, male and female alike, are exhausted, teetering on the edge of a cliff. They are losing sleep and suffering anxiety-related disorders. They have deeply compromised their personal lives and family lives. They suffer from brown out (a decline in productivity due to overload) and burn out, two factors that, our research shows, are compromising their value and squelching innovation. Despite their commitment to their jobs, the majority of men and women want out within one year.

The data showcased in this study describe both a challenge and a risk. The extreme work model has been a profit spinner and a boon for companies. It’s not going away anytime soon. Indeed there is no quick fix to the extreme job phenomenon. But the writing is on the wall. Over the long term, the extreme work model creates vulnerability and is not sustainable. Companies prepared to re-engineer extreme jobs underpin top talent with a more sustainable work model will have a significant competitive advantage in the future.