MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 124 / WORTH

PRAISE THE WORKAHOLIC

Make the employee who cannot disconnect the team's example of commitment.

Celebrate the colleague who sends emails at midnight and works through weekends. Present their availability as an aspirational standard. When others protect their time, assure them it is their choice and remember who went the extra mile.

THE MECHANISM

Compulsive overwork elevated into an informal performance standard.

Primary: WORTHCONTROLMEANING
RATIONALE
Workaholic behavior supplies visible effort and can normalize extreme investment without formally requiring it.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Employees learn that the safest way to demonstrate commitment is to make work difficult to stop doing.
COMMON FAILURE
Distinguishing healthy engagement from compulsive overwork and avoiding status systems that reward inability to disengage as if it were automatically high performance.
SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT

Evidence, with limitations.

Claim

Workaholism is distinct from high work engagement and is associated with strain-related outcomes such as burnout and work–family conflict.

Evidence

Clark and colleagues (2016) meta-analyzed correlates and outcomes of workaholism; patterns varied across health, attitudes and work performance. The construct cannot be inferred simply from long hours or visible dedication.

Limitations: Mostly correlational literature with differences in workaholism measurement; no causal assertion about every high-hours worker.

Sources

These references offer context, not a completed review or a test of this instruction.

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