newsminer.com

I have a friend who considers it a good week if she only has to work 60 hours.

Her job is exciting and her company compensates her well financially, but it also requires that she travel quite a bit.

In addition, she has to stay connected to her cell phone at all times to ensure she doesn’t miss important calls from clients.

We recently got our families together for a trip to Disneyland, and I was impressed she was able to take four days off.

It was during this trip she told me she was quitting her job. She’s an incredibly hard worker, and it was difficult for her to admit that she was too burned out to do it for another year.

My friend has what is referred to as an “extreme job” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce in their Harvard Business Review article “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek.”

There are about 1.7 million Americans who have extreme jobs. “Extreme” is defined as a job that requires more than 60 work hours per week, has a faced-paced/high stress work flow, extensive travel and includes work outside of the office.

Companies have traditionally been able to lure in applicants with exceptionally high pay, an impressive title and the potential for a corner office. Many are also attracted to these jobs because they offer intellectual stimulation and the excitement that comes with accomplishing big projects under tight deadlines.

But extreme workers usually pay a high price for these things. Seventy percent of men and women thought their jobs were negatively affecting their health. More than 70 percent said their jobs interfered with their ability to maintain their home, 46 percent said it interfered with them having a strong relationship with their spouse/partner and half said it interfered with them having a sex life. While 65 percent of men felt their jobs were harming relationships with their children, only 33 percent of women felt the same way. In the short run, extreme workers are exceptionally productive. In the long run, however, their jobs get the better of them, which often leads to burnout or a search for less demanding work.

In 2005, Fortune magazine surveyed executives and found that high-powered men and women are “increasingly strung out.” Jody and Matt Miller summarized the survey stating that “60-hour weeks once thought to be the path to glory are now practically considered part-time. Spouses, kids, friends, prayer, sleep — time for things critical to human flourishing is being squeezed by longer hours at the top.” Those who work in service firms in investment banking, law and consulting are hit especially hard with 80-hour work weeks being the norm.

The Center for WorkLife Law recently conducted a study and found that more than 75 percent of supervised attorneys reported they were working too many hours to take care of their personal and health needs. Law firms spend about $1 billion a year to train and develop their attorneys and don’t usually make money on them until their fourth year.

On average, it costs a law firm between $200,000 and $500,000 to replace a second-year associate.

About 25 percent of associates leave their first law firm within the first two years, 43 percent leave within three years, and within five years almost 80 percent of all associates have moved on. This high attrition rate, not surprisingly, was due to attorneys’ unwillingness to work excessive hours and “the desire for a healthier work-life balance.”

According to a study by the United Nations International Labor Organization, workers in the U.S. spend more hours on the job than any other industrialized nation. In a recent BusinessWeek article, “Why Everyone’s Working So Hard,” M. Goldsmith discusses how, as a consultant for large organizations in the 1980s, it was typical for managers to work 35 to 40 hours a week and take five-week vacations every year. But several things happened in the past few decades that have changed this.

Managers make a much higher salary than they used to, and with high salaries come high expectations. Shareholders now put a lot of pressure on senior executives to perform and are quick to let them go when they don’t. Additionally, when technology allows executives to be available 24/7, corporations expect no less.

Despite this “dark side” of extreme jobs, less than 20 percent of Baby Boomers say they are likely to quit within the next two years. They also assume younger generations feel the same and will eventually take over their senior positions.

But 30 percent of extreme workers between the ages of 35 to 44 state they are likely to leave their extreme jobs in two years. That number jumps to 36 percent for those who are 25 to 34. Younger generations are simply less likely to stay at jobs that require huge personal sacrifices. Jody and Matt Miller summarized the problem well by stating that the issue can’t be resolved by “tinkering at the margins to add flexibility. Instead, delivering better business performance while improving lives means rethinking the way work gets done and how consuming senior jobs need to be. It’s a lesson corporate America needs to learn before an entire generation of senior talent melts down or decides to stay home.”