The Work Wire
SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. and Bob Goodwin, President at Career Club, host a lively conversation on how the latest news impacts all things work-related.
The Work Wire
Overwork Consequences - The Work Wire
When 100-hour work weeks become the norm, who pays the ultimate price? Join us on this gripping episode of the Work Wire as Johnny C. Taylor Jr., CEO of SHRM, and I uncover the startling realities of extreme work hours faced by junior bankers at Bank of America. We pull back the curtain on the life-threatening consequences of relentless overwork, sharing harrowing anecdotes from a Wall Street Journal article that spotlight the dire need for recovery periods. By drawing parallels to high-level athletes who require rest to perform at their best, we underscore the unsustainable and damaging nature of prolonged overwork, not just to employees, but to the entire business.
Ethical and legal implications come into sharp focus as we address the pressure on employees to falsify time records and the responsibilities that people managers have in safeguarding well-being. We delve into the necessity of adhering to the Fair Labor Standards Act and how organizations can often reflect broader cultural issues. From courageous conversations with top performers to the potential benefit of increased staffing, we explore practical solutions for maintaining a healthy work culture. Finally, we emphasize the vital role of personal agency and the critical need for HR and upper management to foster environments where employees can thrive, even in the most demanding roles.
Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, and welcome to another episode of the Work Wire, where I'm joined by my co-host and good friend, johnny C Taylor Jr, the present CEO of SHRM. Johnny, how are you today?
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:I'm in a really good mood.
Bob Goodwin:What puts you in a good mood today?
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:I don't know. You know when you're having a bad mood and you know likewise when you're having a a good. Normally, I know why I'm in a bad mood today. I'm just not in a bad mood, I'm in a good mood.
Bob Goodwin:So that's a weird intro. I know, it's a Friday. You're a born optimist, I think that's right. I saw you drinking coffee. So if we put all that together, that's right, mix it all up.
Bob Goodwin:So what I thought would be a really interesting topic there. We saw an article this week in the Wall Street Journal with Bank of America and their junior bankers and I'm going to read some excerpts from this in a second but examples of where junior bankers are just being pushed to the absolute limit. They're working 100-hour weeks and, like I said, again, just specifics. It kind of culminated in May with an employee actually dying, and so I thought it would be really helpful to kind of unpack this in a few ways. I mean, one is the human and ethical cost, there's the business risk and then it's just sort of the culture and social implications. I'm sure you've got other places that we can go with this, but with that, let me just read just a little bit so listeners can kind of get grounded into why this is fairly shocking.
Bob Goodwin:So one young lady thrilled to accept a job from B of A while she's a student at Smith College, a very elite school. She quit B of A in 2022 after three years in the Chicago office, where senior bankers kept her and her teammates at their desk until 5 am and instructed them and this is really the important part to lie about their hours. Once she said she worked until 4 am in the office, was on her way home in a taxi, only for her boss to request more changes for a proposal to a client and leave a printed copy for the staff later to review. That morning she just turned around and went back to work. Roy Wang worked as a junior investment banker for the bank in Tokyo, meticulously logged his overtime hours, but when human resources told his boss that he was working too much, the manager told him just to report only as many as was allowed and just forget the rest, and he ended up leaving after his doctor flagged high cholesterol and other indicators that he was getting truly unhealthy.
Bob Goodwin:An analyst on the Latin American finance team in New York collapsed last year after working long hours, prompting his colleagues to call an ambulance to the office. And then, lastly, this associate that had been put in over 100 hours to finish a $2 billion acquisition, by the way, that they didn't get and this gentleman died wife, children. So I mean, it's so extreme. It sounds like we're talking about a Netflix show or something, but this is happening in real time in corporate America. What do you think?
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:that you we've used the phrase work yourself to death. I don't think we literally meant that, but here we are, and so I start from the standpoint of it's not even. It's. Not only is it not good for the individual and their family and people who rely on them, et cetera, but it's not good for the business, because if someone is that good they're not machines You're going to burn them out, right? I mean people. If I have a star, just think about what we do in in athletics and you're the person who explained this to me, if you remember. You know, after an athlete, a very high level athlete, and I would consider bankers who are operating on $2 billion deals to be that that they have a built-in period to what's the term you use.
Bob Goodwin:Well, I mean with muscles. It's hypertrophy, it gets torn but it recovers. That's right. We need that recovery period.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:That's right. That recovery period is essential, and you're describing a situation where someone worked until 5 am and then, literally within an hour, was asked to come back Every once in a while. You can do that. I want to make sure that's the part of me, that I want to make sure. There are periods.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:All of us have had to do overnighters. All of us have had to have periods where you work, you know, hundred hours in a week because there's some really important work to be done or familial responsibilities, when I have a mother who's sick and I have to work, and then so I leave work and do. I'm the son who has to rotate. This week is my week to take care of mom overnight in the hospital. Like life does happen. So you know. It's why you and I don't use the term work-life balance, because you're not always in balance. But where this goes on for a sustained period is the problem, and I want to make sure that the listeners here know that this is not a situation where someone says well, you know, I stop at 45 hours every week because that's healthy. I don't. I think that also is an overcorrection. The other way, because you want to figure out how to integrate work and life. Companies are under increasing pressure to to produce good financial results, strong financial results, and something that you know I talk about a lot is the pressure that we get from employees along wage inflation. Right, you want to make a lot of money and I've got to get enough productivity out of you for me to make a profit and to pay you a lot of money, and so some of this is out of kilter. Now I want to make sure no one hears me saying therefore, johnny said it's okay to burn people out to make more money. I'm not saying that. I am saying, though, as an I'll just give you my own personal story.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:I started on a major law firm so I'm a lawyer by training before I became HR, and I knew that they were going to pay me an insane amount of money as a 23-year-old lawyer who knew nothing. I just freshly minted law degree, I had no specialty, but I went to a big law firm. They paid me a lot of money, but I knew, coming in the door, that I've got to bill 2000 hours a year bill. Now, what does student math in 50 weeks? So with the two week vacation, those remaining 50 weeks, I had to bill 40 hours a week.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:That means, if you know anything about billing, you're going to work 50 to 60 hours to actually net billable hours because you're not billing every moment that you're in the office. You stop to have lunch, you talk to friends or there's time when there's no work. So you're there but you can't bill it to anyone. So I signed up for that. Bob, I knew it. Those of us who finished law school or medical school or professional schools you got a lot of debt and you decide I'm going to do this hard, intense work for longer hours than some of my contemporaries but I'm going to be paid a lot of money to either pay down my debt or set up my nest egg or wet up debt. I said whatever it is.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:So I do think there's some personal responsibility. Here, too, is where I'm landing on this. Like no one's going to work me a hundred hours a week consistently, there's a point at which I'm going to say I got to work somewhere else, right.
Bob Goodwin:No, no. So. So I'm glad you brought up your story Cause I was going to bring it up if you didn't Cause cause. No, seriously, I mean, you've worked your tail off your entire career. You have a capacity for work that a lot of people don't Right, but you know that and you've said but this is what I want to do and I want to be compensated for it. Fair enough the thing.
Bob Goodwin:And whether we're talking because I was trying to think what are the other use cases, because this is extreme, I don't know medical residencies, that's pretty horrible, well for sure, and that's real no 100. And then you've got, you know, like my wife was an accountant, like and when they're doing some audit in their billable hours. The same thing I was thinking about consulting firms like mckinsey was in the the news not too awfully long ago and it wasn't completely complimentary on what the experience is like for a junior associate. But these are kids coming from the best schools in the world your point maybe with more than a little bit of debt and or stars in their eyes on how much money they're going to make and they're going to get that McKinsey Goldman, you know, b of A, whatever Pedigree, exactly, and and and I think everybody knows Goldman B of A whatever Pedigree, pedigree exactly, and I think everybody knows that that does come at a price.
Bob Goodwin:The issue for me and I'd love to hear you talk about this is where it goes really, really sideways. Is the lying about it? We've got policies in place, right? So so, like we, we know, and I think the evasion is like 80. So it wasn't like you know, it was 55, it was 80 hours. And these people are blowing past that by Tuesday. And could you do that? No, but it'd take more days than that.
Bob Goodwin:But you know what I'm saying and so so it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, like that. That's not only said, not ethical right. I'm curious if it's legal and I know this isn't a legal show and I never want to put you on the spot with offering a legal opinion.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Well, so let's start on the ethical side. You start with. These are human beings, and that's the problem. Is you talking about the loss of humanity in work? That's what it is.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:The idea that an organization would even ask, put peer pressure on someone to work that many of hours for a sustained period of time to the detriment of their own personal health is a problem, and we as people managers have an obligation to be shepherds of our people. So I know when I pushed someone too hard, they manifested this person didn't just pass out at work, there were indications. That's number one. Then the ethical question of suggesting that someone lie about the number of hours worked. Yeah, there's also an illegal problem there. We've known companies that didn't want to pay overtime, so it wasn't that they weren't working you for 60 hours, it's I didn't want to pay you for the two hours over 40 that you worked. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, it is illegal to lie about the number of hours you work and it's unethical to lie about anything related to work. Frankly, right. So you have both a legal and an ethics problem, and I know some of you out there who are really trained in Fair Labor Standards Act say yeah, but he's an exempt employee. I'm saying, documenting anything and changing it from what it is has to violate some law, right? Just bottom line. So I think we are.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:It's a troubling problem. If this were a one-off incident it wouldn't be okay, but we could understand it, because there's always an organization. B of A may have two 300,000 employees thinking that the senior team there is fully aware of what's happening in every one of their offices around the world. This is just corporate America. You mentioned someone's in London. Right, that's really tough.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:But what concerns me and I'm sure I know the management team at Bank of America, chro, their CEO I was just in a meeting with their CEO on a call with CHRO that's not their culture. So what they have to do is deal with the specific situation and we don't know the details of it. So it's unfair for us to really know the details of it. But I will say this, and I am confident that B of A has said that's not okay by us. So then you've got to go back and remind the organization what are the rules here? What's our culture? What behaviors are? This is not how we work. You're not talking about the definition of culture, how things get done around here. This isn't how we get them done and you've got to reinforce it, the messaging of it, and you've got to hold people accountable who allow this.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:So in the case of the people manager who encouraged someone not to reflect the real time, there have to be real consequences to that. That's a terrible offense in my mind. Again, I don't know all of the details of the particular situation, so it's really unfair for us to say maybe there's a version of the story that says the person was told to do it. The people manager may say absolutely wasn't the case. I have proof that I encouraged them to go home. But this person and I've seen this in my law firm context you have some people who are so type A, so driven, so competitive, that even when you encourage those people to take time off, they won't.
Bob Goodwin:Right, because I can't get ahead.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Right, which you could argue is a bigger cultural issue. But you know, again, I'm real big on personal accountability as well, right, and that's something that I think I just don't know enough about the facts here. But if it's true, let's say it this way If you assume the facts as they've been reported, that a manager or managers told repeatedly throughout this culture that it was okay, you have an Enron moment where people just are violating ethics.
Bob Goodwin:Right, that's a problem violating ethics right, that's a problem. Yeah, so it's interesting talking about culture, and in my last corporate job I led our Wall Street business. So working with PE firms, buy side, sell side, hedge funds, all those folks in central Manhattan like that is a hardcore. That is a hardcore. There's so much money on the table, so much money on the table and you know, missing that $2 billion deal costs somebody a bunch of money, that's right. Potentially costs somebody their job, that's right.
Bob Goodwin:So, culturally, there's a couple things I want to get at if, if and I'm not picking on BFA, which is because Goldman, like I said, has been in the news for this, mckinsey's been in the news for stuff like this, so, so it's not just limited to Bank of America If I'm the guy or the gal leading the investment bank part of their business, where all this is supposedly happening, is all right, then I need more people. If you're telling me that I can't run the horses, that I've got as hard as I've been working them, then I need more people because the work still has to get done. It's got to get done because this is a very deadline-oriented business and I'm reading your facial expression yes, no, maybe, maybe.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Maybe the answer is throw more bodies, or maybe it's. It's a piece of work. If I'm writing a brief in a law firm, having 10 people writing on the brief doesn't get the brief done quicker. I mean, you need one person who's very focused and is a subject matter expert. So sometimes it's not as simple as adding resources, and especially if you have three of those at one time. It is a workload issue and this is where you raise the point.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:I won't take a lot of time on it, but there are times when banks, financial services, law firms, et cetera, have to walk away from business. So it's just we can't take any more because we can't run these horses any and I'm using horses in the sense of a race any harder, and maybe that's it. So that's a bigger conversation. Is we are? There's more food in our mouths than we can swallow. So at this point, right and that's really a different discussion how much is enough for the enterprise? And that so it may be. That's my point.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:It could be as simple as hire 10 more associates know this industry and could do this deal that are available right now. The deal came in the door because some hostile takeover was a threat and we had to do this on a dime and you can't just produce highly experienced investment banker. I mean, you know, right, that's not. So. It could be a trial with you, and we both try to do this for the audience and especially for the HR profession. Sometimes we can be pretty judgmental. Sometimes we can not totally understand the nuance of big business and specific industries. It could be that they're a limited number of people. This particular person could be the specialist in this area and we just work them too hard and that's bad for him and it's bad for us.
Bob Goodwin:One of the points that you brought up. When I said maybe it's just we need more bodies, you said yeah, but it could be process. I think that that's interesting.
Bob Goodwin:Back on culture, though, there's a I hope I can characterize this properly but, it's almost like a fraternity of like dude, I went through this, you're going to go through this. It's a like, a fraternity you know of like dude, I went through this, you're going to go through this. It's a rite of passage, basically. In fact, it's a badge of honor that you went through this, because you are now a Green Beret, you're a Navy SEAL Like this isn't for everybody. You're elite because you could put up with this and look at, you know, at the people who couldn't make it. You're an A player.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up in sports. We do this a lot Whenever you're at the top of your game, and that's really what fundamentally is going on here is. I was that associate who wanted to be at the top of my associate class. Now there are 35 of us, a types, very competitive da-da-da-da-da-da. Some of that came from within right and the culture didn't stop us from doing it right and didn't but didn't. So it didn't encourage nor discourage Right, and maybe you encouraged me because you paid me more. But I've seen that in highly competitive, elite professionals of any sort, where they actually it is a rite of passage. It is a point of pride to be able to say I did this for law. I remembered working through a weekend and I was so proud of the fact that I worked the entire July 4th weekend on this case and I bragged. All the rest of you losers were out enjoying July 4th. Johnny Taylor was in hustling and I'm going to make partner earlier than you all.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:The organization, the law firm, didn't force me to do that, I kind of wanted it to. It was bragging rights for me and you do see that as people get to, you know we see in athletes and athletics people play hurt. They know they're not supposed to. The question is should the coach not allow them to do it? In this instance, should the people manager say I know you're driven, johnny, but I'm not. I'm going to make you go home. Stop, leave Period. So there's a lot of this going on. I don't know enough and you and I don't know all of the facts. I will tell you the notion of bringing someone back an hour after having worked essentially 24, 28 hours, it seems wrong and it seems there's no set of circumstances to justify it.
Bob Goodwin:Tell me if this is an okay direction to go in. I'm thinking about, like our HR practitioner who's listening to this and it's like, well, maybe it's not. With those guys. We don't want to have people dying or ambulances coming to the office because people are working too much. But there are some managers, there's some people leaders that are pushing people too hard. They're creating an environment. And again, in this particular case, the allegation, and with 1,100 comments coming after people who used to work, they're like yeah, that's the way it works. As an HR person, like we put the rules in place. You know you're supposed to do this. We kind of know that maybe not everything's being adhered to the way that it's been prescribed. What's your advice to the HR professional listening to this that sees things that they know aren't right, but it's embedded?
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:in the culture somehow. Well, that's one C is culture, but courage is the other C and we as HR professionals owe it to our employers as well as our employees, to step up when we see wrong being done. I mean, it's the same excuse that people used for the casting couch in media. You know well that's the way it was and I knew it was going. It wasn't a secret that Weinstein did what Weinstein did and we allowed these people, the stars again, the elite to do this, and we see this in music and industry. We've seen this everywhere. Shame on us as a profession.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:And I get I'm not saying it's easy to be courageous to go in and say you know that big rainmaker on the investment banking side or the law firm, he or she is running their people ragged and I as HR, so what's my job? Ideally? Ideally, you would go to that person and use our influence and persuasion skills to remind them that there are people on the other side of the desk Right. And I've found that I've worked in an environment where you go and say listen, I know what you're trying to do To your point. Do you need me to find you more people, do you?
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Can we do things to give? Do you, can we do things to give? Can we agree on how we're going to help you manage your talent? Because it's not good for you if you burn this person out or they, you know, lose their life, because now that star that you thought you couldn't do without you're going to have to do without them anyway. So, courageous conversations where it doesn't work, with the manager and I try not to go around people, but going right at that people leader, people, manager level and having using your skills to get them to find a solution to achieve their workload. If that's not possible, then you must go up the chain and escalate it to someone who can really address it, and that's where your CHRO and ultimately the rest of the C-suite has to step in and say this is not good for anyone. So it's courage, it's courage, courage, courage.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. It is courage. I think, too, there's an opportunity for B of A to turn this into. It's going to take a little bit of time, but ultimately a competitive advantage, Absolutely Right. You know, kind of rise from the ashes of you know, this is not a great article. This does not reflect well on them. What are we going to do to change, be better for this and actually create a competitive advantage? Because this clearly has this clearly has recruiting implications.
Bob Goodwin:Also, I'm not sure if I was looking to do a deal that I'm going to run over to B of A right now, because I'm not really sure I like how they do business. Again, I'm not trying to be naive and act like I don't understand how investment banking really, really works, but at the same time, something that's a little more ethical, a little more human-centric and you don't have to sacrifice the human on the way to the deal. And I think that it feels like there's some element of Wall Street in this case, but it could be other industries that believe like, no, it is kind of a Pyrrhic victory. Yeah, we lost a bunch of people, but we got the deal. But I do think there's a competitive advantage, opportunity for B of A to turn this, which right now not a great PR move, into.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Here's what we've done differently and here's what makes us better for it, bob, and I have all the confidence that that's exactly what they're doing. I mean, the reality is and this is no excuse for anyone but when you run these large enterprises I mean my organization pales in size in comparison to, from a size perspective, sort of a V of A, but we've got 100 or so people in India and the Middle East. There are several layers of management over there. On any given day, I'm not sure that I know what's going on. Could there be a people manager even at Sherm who is a driver and is driving their people to the point of the questions.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:I can do, and it is important at the corporate level, to make sure that you continue cascading down. This is our culture. We don't burn and churn people, et cetera, and reinforce that. And then the only other thing I can do is, if I learn that the woman who, acho Khanna, as you know, is running the India and our business, is in fact not living the cultural guiding principles that we have, I coach her up or coach her out. And that's where we as HR and that's where that courage comes from, because we've got to be able to say, even if that person is a superstar producer, we've got to be able to say even if that person is a superstar producer, we've got to be able to say the ends don't justify the means.
Bob Goodwin:Right. So I appreciate any parting thoughts on this, johnny, because it's a tough issue. There's not a simple answer, because no tough issue has a simple answer. Any parting thoughts you'd want to leave folks?
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:with yeah, and I resist calling them parting thoughts because it may feel like I'm now putting the responsibility and the onus back on the employee, but I will say uh, we also individually, and you and I talk about managing our careers. Yeah, no one is going to make me work a hundred hours a week unless I you know what I mean. There's a point at which I have a tough decision. I might, if I need to work, I might do it for a period of time, but I'm going to be in the market looking for a new job because you can't do that. So I just would remind all of us you used the term agency. Yes, right, I'm not going to let you kill me over a paycheck. I'm just not going to let it happen. And we do have to remind employees that you're not a slave. You work here because you choose to work here and because we choose to have you work here. And it does require a certain amount of standing up and saying enough's enough. And again, I have a high appreciation for people that are very achievement-oriented.
Bob Goodwin:Some people are money-motivated, I hear. But you're making choices. These are choices that you are making as a young person who hasn't seen a lot of the world outside of a classroom, potentially. And then you get into real life in new york, working at, you know, a fortune 50 institution. Maybe this isn't what I thought it was going to be, omg like. I think I I need to pivot from this, figure out how to make something work here or pivot from it. But to your, your point, we always have autonomy, we always have agency, and if this isn't aligning with who I am and what I want to be, but at the same time, you know what, I go into this with malice of forethought. I know what I'm doing, but I want the pedigree and I am willing to put up with a pretty high level of crap to get there. Good on you. That's your choice. God bless you. That's your choice. Just mind your health.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Know the consequences, that's right.
Bob Goodwin:That's what you're getting into.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Johnny, we do not.
Bob Goodwin:I love this because we'll talk about real things and not just what's kind of the happy little answer to things. These are hard choices and it's real life and this is happening in the workplace today. I just appreciate the opportunity I know our audience appreciates the opportunity to kind of really fully explore them. So thank you for today.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:Thank you, and thank you for tackling something because we could. This is a tough one. It's not as black and white. The headline is jarring, got it, and the story beyond the headline is very disturbing. But I think what we as HR professionals have to do and people managers who are listening is you've now got to unpack this and really focus on what will we do to ensure that we aren't that headline story that our organization isn't. That's probably the okay, the what now?
Bob Goodwin:Yep Awesome.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr:All right, Johnny, I will let you go Listening audience.
Bob Goodwin:Thank you guys so much for spending a few minutes with us today here on the Workwire. Thanks, Johnny, Thank you.
