Loss of social meaning drives overwork

There is an unprecedented loss of meaning in our culture. Family had been a source of meaning, but now people rarely live near their families, which are often both physically and emotionally distant. Religious identification has also suffered a decline, with religion identified with institutions and devoid of meaning. Even living in close proximity to other people no longer supplies a sense of meaning, as the life of one’s neighbor is as distant as the walls are close.

With the existential desire for meaning unmet, people gravitate towards the workplace to find it. This is the place they meet new people and establish friendships. This is where their efforts are appreciated, and their labor makes a visible impact.

Business must recognize the search for existential experience among its employees. Companies like Google and Facebook, and my own employer to a lesser extent, take advantage of the unmoored desire of recent generations for meaning by supplying many of the components of meaning in-house: community, impact, expression. Places like the Googleplex allow employees to spend their entire lives in the workplace, to the benefit of Google more than the employee in my opinion. My own company recently instituted a new social event for Fridays to encourage relationship building within the company after people communicated fear we were becoming too institutional.

In a recent conversation over lunch with a co-worker named Dave, I experienced this search for meaning outside the old ways. Dave wants to be happy and to have adventure in his life. He appreciates the role of religion for creating community, but believes his spiritual fulfillment would be stifled by institutional religion and thus avoids it. His family is scattered, and he has a strained relationship with both his father and sister. In order for me to help him I must find meaning outside of work in which to invite him.

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