Crandi

How Work Intensification Is Quietly Destroying Productivity

Leo Migdal
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how work intensification is quietly destroying productivity

There exists a peculiar form of exhaustion that has nothing to do with physical exertion. It arrives not at day’s end but seeps into the morning, an invisible weight that grows heavier with each endless to-do list. This is the signature of work intensification—a quiet epidemic reshaping the modern workplace, where employees are expected to accomplish exponentially more within the same constrained hours. The phenomenon isn’t entirely novel. What distinguishes today’s iteration is its unprecedented scale and stealth. Fuelled by digital connectivity, lean staffing models, and an obsession with optimisation, work intensification has paradoxically become productivity’s greatest enemy.

Workers toil longer, take fewer breaks, and respond to emails well past midnight—yet somehow feel perpetually behind. The mathematics of modern work are brutally simple: more tasks, same resources, tighter deadlines. Praveer Priyadarshi, a senior HR leader, observes how this equation has become systemic. “Earlier, a task may have been distributed among two or three individuals. Today, with cost pressures and client expectations, we often see one person handling the entire load. The deadlines are tighter, the demands more intense, and support less available.”

“Earlier, a task may have been distributed among two or three individuals. Today, with cost pressures and client expectations, we often see one person handling the entire load. The deadlines are tighter, the demands more intense, and support less available.” Consider a mid-sized services firm that recently consolidated roles to reduce costs. In theory, this promised leaner teams and faster turnaround. In practice, it meant project managers simultaneously handling client communication, scheduling, and quality control.

Within three months, employee morale plummeted, deliverables were delayed, and staff turnover spiked. Gone are the days when people worked until they couldn’t. While many business principles stay the same, the composition and mindset of the workforce are evolving rapidly—and so are the productivity risks. A quiet exit is happening across workplaces. According to a recent Gallup report, employees have been steadily working fewer hours over the past five years—dropping from an average of 44.1 hours in 2019 to 42.9 in 2024. There’s a generational divide: workers under 35 have reduced their hours by nearly two, while 35-and-over workers have cut just under one.

That equates to a full workweek lost per year for 35-and-over employees and two for employees under 35. On the surface, the difference may appear small. But across an organization, this shift—if left unaddressed—can compound into significant productivity and engagement issues. This productivity dip isn’t just about time on the clock—it’s part of a broader transformation in workforce values and well-being. At the heart of the issue is burnout, which is costing companies millions annually. But it's not just physical exhaustion—it's often mental, emotional, and spiritual depletion that eventually manifests itself in physical decline.

Employee engagement is also dropping. In 2024, engagement levels dropped to their lowest point in a decade, with only 31% of workers actively engaged, according to another Gallup report. Workers under 35—again, the same group working fewer hours and experiencing deeper productivity losses, were the most affected. As values and priorities shift, younger generations want more meaning, alignment, and employer support. Salary matters, but it's not enough. Without a sense of purpose and connection, disengagement sets in.

As the mental and emotional toll of work increases across all levels, including the C-suite, leaders must rethink how they define and implement wellness. Focusing on physical health isn't sufficient. What's needed now is a plan that genuinely encompasses mental and emotional well-being. It's about building a culture to support optimal energy management, psychological safety, and sustainable performance. New data from 1,000 employees across industries uncovers what’s behind today’s overwhelming work culture, who it’s hitting hardest, and what leaders (and employees) can do to push back. Burnout is up.

Stress is everywhere. And even your highest performers are quietly drowning. Why? In our latest Remesh webinar, Organizational Psychologist Dr. Patrick Hyland and Founder and CEO of Anthrome Insight LLC Melissa Swift explored a growing but often overlooked issue: work intensification. What happens when there’s not just too much work—but too much crammed into every hour?

New data from 1,000 employees across industries uncovers what’s behind today’s overwhelming work culture, who it’s hitting hardest, and what leaders (and employees) can do to push back. To develop a better understanding of work intensification, we conducted a field study using the Remesh platform in late April 2025. Using Remesh Recruit + Live & Flex, we surveyed 1,000+ Work intensification has a direct impact on productivity and morale. Often in quest of lean and efficient teams intense pressure is created which results in burnouts, inadvertent errors, mental and emotional issues.

It’s a treadmill which exhausts an individual and has direct bearing on organisational viability. Human Resource needs to be handled with empathy. Scientific assessment of work load and appreciation by top leadership about the well-being of their staff should be one of the core review metric.It’s also important for employees to take charge and flag unreasonable... Read some thoughts on perils of work intensification. “Earlier, a task may have been distributed among two or three individuals. Today, with cost pressures and client expectations, we often see one person handling the entire load.

The deadlines are tighter, the demands more intense, and support less available.” Praveer Priyadarshi, Senior HR Leader “If your people don’t know what exactly is expected of them, they’re going to be in a... Well-defined KRAs and KPIs give them direction, and once you have that, the stress levels naturally decrease.” Dr. Praveen Purohit, Deputy CHRO, Vedanta Resources Plc Read more at: https://lnkd.in/grSXfWnF ————— Your innovations deserve the spotlight! Apply for #HRKatha Rising Star Leadership Awards 2025 and join India's most promising HR talents. Make your mark. Apply now!

-https://lnkd.in/gFGpScCD Thanks for sharing, No machines are overworked and have factory specified and planned maintenance schedules. Not for human beings. They need to fall sick to stop the treadmill. Nice to read about things that we've been observing. What might be the crux of the matter - is that these execs are ill equipped to handle additional load.

They still follow traditional methods of working - which just don't suffice today! Can you imagine the financial plight of the organisation? They have reduced the salary component by reducing the workforce. They have also not been able to fund the training needs that could prepare those that still work there! This is typical short term thinking - probably of some exec looking for brownie points. Isn't it the job of the senior & top execs to imagine a situation when those overworked exec just stop working - burnout / quit whatever....

just because they are overloaded! They will then will face the consequences of the this cost cutting... Till then.. pull up your socks, buddy... chin up! Thanks for sharing Praveer Priyadarshi.

It's not much about distributing the work..Gen Z is more about multi tasking, for.them they don't take work if they are without clarity of deliverables, Our generation took everything that came our way. Moreover the current generation is hungry for work but on their terms and time and need their space so will not stretch beyond working Norms defined by them. We have to catch up lot. My views only. It’s not just you—work kind of stinks right now. If you’re struggling to get something done because too many people were involved, getting hung up by emotion and conflict in your workplace, or just swaying under the weight of too many tasks in...

. . congratulations! You’re experiencing work intensification—the gnarliest trend we don’t talk about enough. Researchers in Europe have been looking at this phenomenon for many years. They pin it down to three things happening, often all at once.

First, workloads are simply too heavy—too many tasks in too little time. Every job has a version of this. You might be invited to too many meetings or asked to pack too many warehouse pallets in an hour. Second, work is too interdependent—it takes too many people to get any given task done. When Jamie Dimon famously complained about a single decision needing 14 committees for approval, interdependence was the issue. ���ǭ5��9x��! �@�=;R�y���UOqHF8��f�����)GJN���&)9S�����u=�}iM&3A�@0����;��{zJ^x��M�N�q@�Go��i?�(s��&{Ӹ��=��������t����4g�A�֠b����;�gׯjN�8�����4�ށ G���{��@�ӏj:��1������(�sڏ���4�c�\��);�f���iq�(��������R�ۮiq�ǧ�0�w��;�/��1=��p?Z\�?

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