Work Has Never Been Better. So Why Does Working Feel So Much Worse?
Human Rights Day reminds us to reflect on our constitutional rights, including human dignity and fair labour practices. Yet today one of the places where these rights are most often tested is the workplace.
Much attention is focused on the conditions in which people live. Far less attention is given to the conditions in which people work. In South Africa, where many employees already face economic pressure, job insecurity and rising living costs, the demands of work continue to grow.
In many workplaces, the day has become fragmented across meetings, messages, emails, dashboards and deadlines. Together these demands keep people mentally switched on from morning to evening. When focused work cannot happen during the day, many try to catch up after hours, blurring the boundary between work and personal time. When this becomes a daily pattern, strain accumulates while people still believe they are delivering.
Research indicates that rising levels of stress, burnout and disengagement are becoming increasingly visible across South African workplaces, with 36% of employees reporting daily stress and more than 70% describing themselves as disengaged at work (Gallup, 2024).
Over the past three decades organisations have built faster and more connected systems around advancing technology. Work now moves at extraordinary speed, with teams coordinating instantly across time zones and expectations of responsiveness steadily increasing. Artificial intelligence is accelerating this shift further by automating tasks, processing vast amounts of information and increasing the speed at which organisations operate and adapt.
But people do not function like systems that can run continuously without pause.
Modern work has been designed around the speed of technology rather than a pace that allows people to concentrate, make effective decisions and maintain energy throughout the day. As technology becomes more powerful and work continues to speed up, the gap is widening. People cannot keep increasing their pace in the same way.
Human performance depends on rhythm. People can sustain pressure when periods of effort are balanced with recovery. Most people are not conditioned to operate under continuous strain. When natural pauses disappear through constant interruption, continuous responsiveness and rising expectations, people are required to sustain levels of pressure that the mind and body struggle to maintain.
When people begin to struggle at work, the problem is often framed as a personal development issue. Employees are expected to become more resilient or manage stress more effectively. Support may appears only once performance has already begun to decline and mistakes start to increase. By that stage, the effects are usually already visible to colleagues and teams.
Responsibility, deadlines and accountability are part of meaningful work. Yet the strain people experience at work is often shaped by the environment they work in. Organisations often talk about culture as what shapes how people behave at work. In practice, however, it is the daily pressures and expectations people face, together with how work is organised and structured, that determine what people are actually able to do. When those realities conflict with what organisations expect from their employees, sustained performance becomes difficult. In these situations, people can begin to feel that they are failing at work despite their effort.
When these conditions persist, the consequences extend beyond the individual. Organisations begin to see declining engagement, higher staff turnover, more frequent absence and reduced productivity. Work-related stress therefore affects both people and organisational performance, making it a critical organisational issue rather than simply an individual concern. Addressing this challenge does not require slowing business down or lowering expectations. Modern organisations must remain responsive and competitive.
The opportunity is to organise work in ways that allow people to sustain performance over time. This shift also changes how we understand culture in organisations.
Culture ultimately comes from how work actually gets done, especially under pressure. It is shaped by what people are able to do, what they believe works, and what the organisation ultimately accepts. When work environments allow people to perform well under pressure, healthier patterns begin to emerge.
People function far better when expectations are realistic, when they have some influence over how they approach their work, and when the environment provides enough clarity and support for them to adapt to change. These conditions will become even more important as technology continues to accelerate the pace and complexity of work. Artificial intelligence does not remove humans from work; it changes the role humans play. AI may automate tasks, but it cannot automate human responsibility.
As organisational systems become more powerful and interconnected, people are increasingly responsible for interpreting information, exercising judgement and making decisions. Doing this well requires attention, clear thinking and enough mental energy to sustain performance throughout the day.
Human Rights Day should draw more attention to the need for workplaces where people can thrive mentally and physically. When people can work in environments that sustain their energy and clear thinking, people and organisations can both thrive. Work should challenge people, not damage them. People should be able to do their job well and go home with the energy and mental space to live the rest of their lives.
About the Author
Ashwin Rajah is the founder of Mindset Matters, an organisational performance consultancy that works with leaders and organisations to help people sustain performance under pressure. He writes and speaks on leadership, human performance and the future of work.
