Mapping the Road to a Better Future of Work and Wellbeing: Why the goal is human flourishing in work and care

Imagine a future of work, care and well-being where all humans could not merely survive, but flourish. And what if, instead of work-family conflict, we supported and truly valued care and enjoyed work-family enrichment, each part of our lives complementing, not competing, with the other? Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
Mapping the Road to a Better Future of Work and Wellbeing: Why the goal is human flourishing in work and care
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Imagine a future of work, care and well-being where all humans could not merely survive, but flourish. Take a breath, a step outside the limited horizon of the current moment and imagine: what if work sustained human thriving, health and well-being, with equitable, living wages, supportive benefits and flexible cultures? With opportunities to grow and time for life, love, care, civic engagement, leisure and joy in the hours we spent outside work?

And what if, instead of work-family conflict, we supported and truly valued care and enjoyed work-family enrichment, each part of our lives complementing, not competing, with the other?

We started with what we know: the way we work isn’t working. Acute and chronic work stress has become so common that, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, work itself was already the fifth leading cause of illness and death in the United States.

How do we get from here to there?

These are some of questions that New America’s Better Life Lab has been grappling with in a podcast partnership with Slate. We also virtually convened community-based organisations, public and private sector leaders, scholars, parents, caregivers and advocates, as well as dozens of employed and unemployed workers from a warehouse picker, ride-share driver, home care aides and high-tech workers to nurses, furloughed field managers, lawyers and many more.

We started with what we know: the way we work isn’t working. Acute and chronic work stress has become so common that, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, work itself was already the fifth leading cause of illness and death in the United States. That’s why we called our podcast series American Karoshi, after the Japanese term for dying from overwork. It’s largely driven by the increasing power gap between workers and employers, with businesses increasingly focused on short-term profits for shareholders by squeezing labour. They rely on layoffs, outsourcing and pushing more workers into precarious contracts or gig work to meet their profit goals.

That toxic stress is also driven, in the United States, by a style of free market “cowboy capitalism”, as MIT Economist David Autor told us in episode one of the podcast. This model provides little to no protections or supports in law, regulation or public policy—like guaranteed paid time off to give care or rest, affordable child and family care, the right to organised labour and have a voice—which workers in peer competitive economies see as basic rights. “If I wanted to be really rich, I would want to be in the United States. If I didn’t think I was going to be so affluent, I would probably want to be somewhere else”, Autor told us.

And, with automation and technology rapidly changing work; the market creating either high- or low-wage jobs and hollowing out the middle; and public policy failing to respond, we run the risk of creating a grotesquely unequal future of work and well-being. We call this The Blade Runner scenario.

How do we follow a different path to a better future?

We’ve been here before: the precipice of major transformation to work, our society and our economy due to technology innovation. We’ve risen to the challenge before. The challenge of automation in the agriculture sector at the turn of the 20th century led to unprecedented public investment in high school and the most educated workforce on the planet. From the depths of the global depression in the 1930s rose a new social contract, with public support for safety nets for those who fall on hard times and a guarantee of decent work with the first-ever minimum wage rate and the 40-hour work week.

Policymakers can pass universal, equitable portable benefits that support families and boost entrepreneurial activity. Research shows that such investments actually end up paying for themselves in the long run through better health, less stress, higher employment rates, happier childhoods and reduced reliance on public safety net services.

So we can rise to the challenge again. In our convening, we realised that the future is a choice. And everyone has a role to play in creating a better one. Here are just a handful of different choices we came up with that we all could make, whoever we are: 

Policymakers:

  • Support care infrastructure: As care advocate Ai-jen Poo told us on episode three of the podcast, care work is the work that enables all other work. The COVID-19 pandemic showed in brutal relief how families have suffered—forced to reduce hours or leave work and so jeopardising family stability and well-being—because of the lack of paid family and medical leave policies and the lack of investing in child, disability and elder care infrastructure. Policymakers can pass universal, equitable portable benefits that support families and boost entrepreneurial activity. Research shows that such investments actually end up paying for themselves in the long run through better health, less stress, higher employment rates, happier childhoods and reduced reliance on public safety net services.
  • Account for workers as assets: Right now, the U.S. tax system taxes investments in people, like education and training, at 25%–33%. Yet investments in capital equipment, software and technology are taxed at only 0%–5%. That only accelerates investment in automation and contributes to the view that human labour is a liability and a cost to cut. Shifting tax policy could shift business mindsets and behaviours in a way that benefits workers and companies.
More on the Forum Network: Mind the Gaps and Overlaps: Integrating care services for older people by Ana Llena-Nozal, Eileen Rocard & Paola Sillitti, OECD
 Demand for long-term care is on the rise, and as more people live longer complex health and care needs are becoming much more common. Policy changes in governance, funding and the workforce can help address current shortcomings and improve the quality of life for older people.
 

Business Leaders:

  • Commit to good jobs for the long term: Warren Valdmanis is a private equity investor and partner at Two Sigma Impact, with a mission to invest in companies committed to creating good jobs and long-term value. He told us on episode 10 of the podcast and also at our public virtual event that the business community needs to shift entrenched mindsets and begin to believe the data that show that good jobs are key to good business, rather than as a cost to cut. To Valdmanis, a good job includes fair treatment, a promising future, psychological safety and a sense of mission and purpose.
  • Collect data on workers’ caregiving status: One Harvard study found that nearly three-fourths of all workers have some kind of care responsibilities. So design policies to support them with flexible work, schedule control, reasonable workloads and paid time off in order to enable them to combine good paid work with time for care and connection.

Remember the stock market is not the economy. About half of all people in the United States don’t have a single penny invested in the stock market. And the vast majority of stocks—84%—are owned by the wealthiest 10% of families.

Journalists and Storytellers:

  • Tell the bigger story: When the monthly jobs reports come out, journalists are quick to spot the headline-grabbing job totals; politicians are quick to crow about jobs created, or blame opponents for jobs lost. But the real story is in the details. How many of these jobs are good ones? With wages and benefits big enough to support human life? Answering that should be the centrepiece of the story. For instance, home care workers are predicted to be not only the fastest growing job group but will also be the largest occupation in the economy by 2031, as the population ages and people live longer with more chronic conditions. They earn about USD 14.15 an hour, struggle with unstable schedules and often have no benefits like paid leave, health insurance or retirement savings.

Remember the stock market is not the economy. About half of all people in the United States don’t have a single penny invested in the stock market. And the vast majority of stocks—84%—are owned by the wealthiest 10% of families. 

  • Use data and question status quo narratives: Are unemployed workers really lazy and unmotivated to get to work? Will Universal Basic Income lead to a nation of do-nothing slackers? Should women and mothers stay home with young children, or at least put family first and manage all the caregiving rather than fully participating in the labour market? Do you think of men who need or want time for caregiving as lesser workers? Or “wusses” as one study found? Is there such a thing as the “deserving” poor, who it’s OK to help, and the “undeserving” poor who aren’t because they must have brought their misfortune upon themselves? Did the 1% really get that way because they're smarter and harder working? Are they the real job creators, as some politicians like to say? (Hint: No. That’s the middle class that’s being gutted.) All of these are often deeply held yet flawed and damaging stereotypes and unconscious biases that warp the way we report stories, and thus shape the way we see the world. Use data to interrogate what’s really going on, and challenge yourself to tell truer stories.

Advocates and Workers:

  • Lift your voices together: Our modern workplaces and overwork culture keep us all isolated from one another, worried about making our own ends meet and often starved for time. Share your stories. Find common cause. Ask for what you need. Do or find the research that shows the business case for worker empowerment and share it. Start or join a worker association, a union or a network of supportive, like-minded peers. Do whatever it takes to realise that you’re not alone, and that the chances of making positive changes that impact the most people are greatest when workers and advocates come together in number.
  • Be clear about what you need and don’t be afraid to ask for it: We asked a wide range of workers, both employed and unemployed, from a warehouse picker and home care aides to tech workers and lawyers, to imagine a future of work and well-being where they could show up as that motivated, skilled worker. All said they needed to feel valued and respected. What does that mean for you? Reflect, talk with others and ask for what you need.

Around the globe, inequality has been on the rise. We in the United States are living in one of the most unequal societies in the world and technology, automation and market forces may be driving us all on a road toward even greater divides. That’s a choice. So is shared prosperity. And we all have the power and a role to play to map a different course to a better future.




Read the OECD report A New Benchmark for Mental Health Systems: Tackling the Social and Economic Costs of Mental Ill-Health



The American Karoshi podcast, a co-production of New America and Slate, is available wherever you get your podcasts. The Roadmap and public event are available on the Better Life Lab website, as is a practical, evidence-based Toolkit for managers and leaders: Designing Equitable and Effective Workplaces for a “Coronanormal” Future of Work. 

 

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