Toxic productivity – where always-on workers delve into work late at night or while on vacation – is ‘extremely harmful to our physical and mental health.’ The best leaders protect worker wellbeing.GETTY IMAGES
It’s nothing new: For decades, clocking long hours has been a quiet badge of honour in workplaces. From late nights at the office to answering emails while on a beach vacation, the idea that working more means achieving more has been deeply embedded in corporate culture. That mindset now has a name – toxic productivity – and increasingly, leaders are questioning this once-seemingly-harmless hallmark of professional life.
“Toxic productivity isn’t new, but it’s intensified,” says Jennifer Moss, a keynote speaker, journalist and consultant who wrote an article headlined “Let’s End Toxic Productivity” for Harvard Business Review.
“The advent of the car phone made it possible to work on the road, which is when I believe the boundary between work and life really started to erode,” says Ms. Moss, also author of the books Unlocking Happiness at Work, The Burnout Epidemic and Why Are We Here?
From BlackBerrys to laptops to smartphones, technology expanded the reach of work into personal time, but the shift to remote work during the pandemic rapidly accelerated the trend.
“What’s changed is the scale and the visibility. Overwork, digital monitoring, meetings, [artificial intelligence] adoption have all expanded,” Ms. Moss says. “Meeting fatigue is one of the most glaring examples.”
Always in a crisis
“The biggest issue is that we are still working as if we’re in a crisis,” Ms. Moss says. “There’s a false layer of urgency added to everything we do.”
The result is a work force that is constantly vigilant and switched on. “This is why it’s called ‘toxic’ productivity – because it’s extremely harmful to our physical and mental health.”
Many organizations still equate long workdays with a sign of commitment, but research suggests the assumption is flawed. Ms. Moss points to work by Stanford economist John Pencavel showing productivity drops sharply once people consistently work more than about 50 hours a week. After 55 hours, the extra time produces little additional output.
Eye on burnout
One of the clearest signals that a company’s culture has tipped into unhealthy territory is when employees feel they cannot log off.
“A culture where everything is urgent is a culture where nothing is truly important,” says Chris Bailey, an Ottawa productivity researcher and author of several books, including The Productivity Project, Hyperfocus and How to Calm Your Mind, who studies attention and workplace performance.
For leaders who want a healthy, productive work force, it’s important to watch for early signs of burnout.
“We tend to equate burnout with just being exhausted, but technically burnout has three attributes,” Bailey says, citing research by psychologist Christina Maslach. “We need to be exhausted, but we also need to feel cynical about work and we need to feel a lack of productivity – we need to feel inefficacious.”
Those signals among individuals can act as early warning signs of an unhealthy workplace culture.
Mr. Bailey says organizations should also pay attention to broader workplace factors that impact burnout rates, including workload, control over one’s schedule, recognition for work, sense of community, fairness and alignment with company values.
Another measure researchers have studied is psychological safety: Research from Google’s Project Aristotle found psychological safety – the ability for employees to speak up and share ideas without fear – was the strongest predictor of high-performing teams.
Hard to measure
But like other non-time productivity metrics, that can be hard to measure on a day-to-day basis.
One way to assess productivity is to look at outcomes rather than activity, Ms. Moss says: quality of work, progress on strategic priorities, innovation, customer impact and employee wellbeing.
“We should be measuring how much employees accomplish – not how busy they are, not how exhausted they are,” Mr. Bailey adds.
One simple approach, he says, is to ask employees what they intend to accomplish in a given week and then check in afterward. “It doesn’t need to be strict or formal. We can just ask them what they intend on accomplishing, try to support them along the way and run interference for them so that they can do their best work.”
Small changes, big impact
Other ways of shifting workplace culture include cutting back on meetings, protecting time for breaks and scheduling time for deep work.
Ms. Moss recalls one CEO who implemented a company-wide ban on meetings between noon and 1 p.m. so employees could step away from their desks for lunch. A Canadian review of 83 studies found that breaks of 10 minutes or more decreased stress and fatigue and increased productivity.
“For our long-term performance, rest is everything,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that leaders should remember that employees often mimic their behaviours. “If you’re answering emails on a Sunday afternoon, your employees will become far more likely to do so as well,” he says.
Instead, leaders should model healthier work patterns, including leaving work on time and protecting periods for focused work.
Mr. Bailey suggests creating simple signals that help protect focus time. At one company he worked with, employees were given custom wooden lamps for their desks. When the lamp was turned on, it signalled they were working on something important and should not be interrupted. In a playful twist, the manager even gave employees squirt guns so colleagues who ignored the signal risked getting sprayed.
Rest and results
While many organizations fear that easing pressure will hurt productivity, research increasingly suggests the opposite. Gallup’s 2025 analysis of workplace studies found organizations with high engagement and wellbeing see 23-per-cent higher profitability, while Oxford researchers have found happier employees are about 13 per cent more productive.
Some companies are already experimenting with healthier approaches to work. Ms. Moss cites outdoor apparel company Patagonia, which she says has long emphasized flexibility and purpose-driven work, and technology company Cisco, which has invested heavily in leadership training focused on empathy and employee care. Software company Atlassian has adopted a “team anywhere” approach that focuses on outcomes rather than where or when employees work.
Ms. Moss believes the broader shift toward healthier productivity models is just beginning. “We’re at a turning point in how we define productivity,” she says. “The future of work is shifting rapidly. When organizations shift toward measuring outcomes and protecting employee wellbeing, the benefit to the business is irrefutable.”