The “40 hour work week” and modern day work culture that is familiar to the majority of the world in present day are by no means actually modern; rather, they date back to nearly 100 years ago, when the industrial revolution and high demand for manufacturing encouraged employers to put a high focus on productivity.
There are many reasons for the systemic decline of employee mental health; for one, employees are increasingly contributing more working hours to meet higher productivity demands. Moreover, rapid improvements in technology have also enabled an entire ecosystem of remote working and being able to “plug-in” to work from anywhere; while this has improved convenience, it also means that truly disconnecting after leaving the office is not necessarily always feasible.
Arianna Huffington explains that in society, there has been a shift in well-being and performance, and that her experiences working with companies to provide their employees with tools to improve well-being and productivity has shown incredible promise. She explains that Thrive's Microsteps process has been adopted by employees at more than 125 organizations in over 140 countries, resulting in increased engagement, retention and productivity, and lower rates of stress, burnout and turnover..
As the conversation around improving employee well-being grows, so does Thrive’s partnerships— the list includes other industry titans such as Salesforce and Levi’s. However, this does not mean that Thrive and other similar organizations that want to fix this problem have an easy path ahead. Notably, one key challenge is the frequent lack of awareness around the subject area.