In our ever-competitive work environment, young professionals such as Lee and Jane continue to be inundated with competing and often daunting demands. Unpredictable and demanding schedules push the limits of work-life integration. Based in Toronto, Lee juggles two full-time jobs, working 70 hours a week split between a marketing manager role and a call service representative position. This break-neck speed has contributed to increased anxiety and burnout, something that is all too familiar amongst the millennial workforce.
Lee starts the workday at 9:30 a.m. and often finds themselves working until 10 p.m., sometimes even pushing through to midnight. The day is filled with meetings, collaborative tasks, and an incessant stream of interruptions, receiving about 200 messages on a single workday and facing approximately 270 notifications—about one every two minutes. The new nonstop demands leave personal time for Lee no longer possible. As a result, he ends up playing catch up on the personal things in the evenings.
To help them balance this growing workload, Lee has developed an ingenious plan. Or, if they go all out one day, they take off work the next day. Even with these measures in place, Lee has faced burnout on at least three occasions since she entered the workforce post-college. Their past marketing job turned toxic — enough so that they got depressed. The seemingly unceasing workdays had a very real impact on their mental health.
As Lee tries to find her way through this difficult landscape, Jane, a second young professional, speaks to the same frustration. She intends to retire from corporate America before her 30th birthday. At the same time, she has gained an important perspective on the rigidity of conventional job hierarchies. Jane’s experience with that first internship while in university was so discouraging that it cultivated an anti-work attitude.
“My first 9 to 5 internship experience in university was so horrible that it made me very anti-career and anti-work, to the point where I wouldn’t do this until I was 65.” – Jane
Jane’s struggle with anxiety runs deeper, rooted in her current caseload, which she calls a “never-ending line.” Her anxiety causes her to miss out on sleep, creating a major hurdle to keeping her mental and physical health in balance.
“I would just be very anxious all the time, and I would lose sleep over it.” – Jane
To deal with these pressures, Jane is working on improving her work-life balance. She understands the importance of mental health − a matter that’s more important than ever in this fast-paced field.
“What I’ve realized is that the only way to fix burnout is to leave the company, because if the environment makes you stressed, you cannot fully mentally protect yourself.” – Jane
Both Lee and Jane’s experiences illustrate the added struggles younger generations encounter while entering the workforce today. As Sal, a fellow CASA professional, puts it, “This demographic is just not making it. They’re charting a course under one of the highest debt loads coming out of university. Further, he addresses how these financial burdens are leading to burnout, as well.
“We’re graduating with a high amount of debt and then working a job that is burning us out, and it’s not even paying for this debt.” – Sal
Sal understood he needed support and found it in therapy. After struggling to cope through his first year on the job, he decided to pursue help. The interaction between burdensome workloads and mental health issues presents significant struggles for young professionals today.
As these people continue to grow their careers, their stipulations become an increased need for free time and freelance flexibility integrated into the work landscape around them. Lee expresses an increasing frustration and yearning among millennials and young professionals alike for a cultural reset in the workplace.
“Young people really value their free time after work, and prefer having enough rest, flexible work environments and more freedom.” – Lee