This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.
Work is killing us. We’ve known it for a long time. Yet we do nothing about it. I’m not talking about workplace-related injuries and illnesses, although that’s part of it. The far more important factors are the way we organize work, the benefits that come from work, and how much control we have over our work.
Stanford University business school professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his recent book Dying for a Paycheck, estimated workplace stress causes 120,000 excess deaths a year—making it the fifth-leading cause of death, surpassing Alzheimer’s and kidney disease. Stress adds almost $200 billion a year to the nation’s healthcare costs.