Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It

Erin Kelly · Phyllis Moen

Mar 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Janet Metzger

About this audiobook

Today's ways of working are not working-even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem. But this unhealthy and unsustainable situation can be changed-and Overload shows how. Drawing on five years of research, including hundreds of interviews with employees and managers, Kelly and Moen tell the story of a major experiment that they helped design and implement at a Fortune 500 firm. The company adopted creative and practical work redesigns that gave workers more control over how and where they worked and encouraged managers to evaluate performance in new ways. The result? Employees' health, well-being, and ability to manage their personal and work lives improved, while the company benefited from higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. And, as Kelly and Moen show, such changes can-and should-be made on a wide scale.

About the author

Erin L. Kelly is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an affiliate of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research and the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative.

Phyllis Moen is a McKnight Presidential Chair, professor of sociology, and director of the Life Course Center at the University of Minnesota. Her books include Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose. Kelly's and Moen's research on work overload has been featured in the New York Times Magazine.

AudioFile Earphones Award winner Janet Metzger brings the experience of nearly four decades of theater, film, and television acting to her work as an audiobook narrator. Janet is also an award-winning documentary narrator and a master teacher at Emory University School of Law.