Didier Logerais, Founder of Toit de Soi
Didier Logerais
Isolation increases health risks for employees
"We worked at the end of the 2000s for a very large industrial company. Internally, its teams were organised on a matrix basis, with each engineer having 3 direct managers: his direct line manager, his project manager and his business line manager.
This made employees very tired. We found cases where employees were working up to twenty hours a day to satisfy the demands of all their bosses. The consequences could be dramatic. There were two suicides. These were obviously traumatic events for the company, and warranted a thorough rethink of the organisation.
Over-solicitation is a real risk to workers' health (fatigue, burn-out and, therefore, suicide), because it generates a very heavy workload and emotional charge. We need to know how to manage them".
Didier Logerais, Founder of Toit de Soi
On the other hand, the collective acts like an immune system
"Isolation encourages stress. The group acts like an immune system: if you're having a hard time at work, you have the support of your colleagues and/or your manager. If you're on your own, the "excess difficulty" (whether it comes from the workload or the emotional charge), like a virus, will sweep you away. Isolation acts as a sounding board, weakening employees. The medical metaphor goes a step further: by increasing stress tenfold, isolation contributes to a higher risk of sick leave or absence from work. At a real cost to the company. Taking the temperature of how employees feel, and then implementing very concrete actions, such as limiting the number of days they can telework, is therefore essential.
