We object to exploiting people’s behavioural styles, preferences, and weaknesses. It is behaviour that is predatory, cynical and mean. We are offended when a casino exploits a person’s addictive personality to encourage them to spend more money. We are outraged by the existence of extruded cheese puff snack politician who preys on our inherent tribalism while flouting the law of the land. And so on.
And yet, we overlook the single largest source of behavioural exploitation—the workplace. Employers leverage common human behavioural traits for the sake of greater productivity and results. As we gain insights into the mechanics of our existence – the how and why of our actions – employers use these insights against employees.1And these enhanced insights are used in all other parts of the great capitalist machine. But that is for another essay.
There are very few limits on the ways an employer may exploit human psychology, other than whatever general work place protections may be in place. Some countries have much better worker protections than other countries, although the global average remains low, with growth (that is, improvement to worker protections) minimal if not outright negative.2See, eg, the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index: Factor 4.8 (“Fundamental Labor Rights Are Effectively Guaranteed”).
Modern human resource departments, as agents for the broader interests of the employer, have become specialised departments that focus on what is euphemistically referred to as performance and talent management, but can be more accurately described as exploiting human psychology.
Why does this matter? It matters in both principle—is it right, or ethical, to treat people in this manner—and in practice to what extent does this exploitation contribute to rising levels of mental health issues in workers, and a growing existential malaise? Work consumes a significant amount of our lives, both directly (the time we spend at those dark satanic mills) and indirectly (the commute, the stress that does not dissipate when we clock off, the applying for jobs, and ironing shirts and so on). There is sleeping, then there is work, and then there is everything else. Or as the French have it: métro, boulot, dodo.
Being Human
As much as being human is an exercise in unending diversity and difference, there is a core of behaviours that make us, well, us. These traits are present in everyone to varying degrees and employers minimise risk by looking for candidates that sit closer to the centre of behavioural dials rather than the extremes.
These common traits that are relevant for this essay—thus allowing me to sidestep the impossible task of sketching out an exhaustive list of common human traits—our inherent prosocial nature; our need for purpose and mission; and a productivity tendency that can be expressed as ‘duty’ or ‘work ethic’.
Our prosocial nature
The most significant common trait is our prosocial nature. Civilisation is built around this nature. And so too are our workplaces.
What do I mean by prosocial nature? It is our tendency to work towards social cohesion and unity while avoiding conflict and the risk that we might be ostracised and cast out from the tribe. It encompasses a gamut of behaviours like cooperation, empathy, conflict minimisation, and avoidance, self sacrifice/selflessness, agreeableness, justice, fairness, trust and many more besides.
We like people! We need to be around people to almost a comical degree. As an extreme negative example, keeping people in isolation from other people is considered an extreme punishment. We feel a strong need to belong, which manifests itself in how we modulate our behaviour and the express our identity: we turn down elements that make it harder to interact with others while amping up those that help or compliment this prosocial nature.
As an example—introverts will often feel compelled to act more like extroverts because—incorrectly—extroversion is perceived as more prosocial than introversion. Most people at my workplace are introverts who are all trying earnestly to pretend they are extroverts.
Our search for purpose
Channelling the father of logotherapy, Victor Frankl, our lives often involve a search for meaning. Every person grapples with this question, and its relative importance, in different ways. The uniting factor, though, is we want life to have a purpose, even if that is one we have self-nominated.
The ~1300 gram squishy mass between our skulls is a blessing, but in the manner of blessings, also a curse. We ask why, why, why. Why are we here, what is the purpose of our existence, how should I live to be satisfied, why should I do anything if death is the inevitable long-term result and on and on we go with our relentless need to question.
For some, religion fulfils this desire. Others, though, are forced to confront the question with a deal of introspection, independence, and creativity. I continue to subscribe to a version of optimistic nihilism: that life’s meaning is derived from the freedom we gain when we understand life has no inherent meaning. And for others still, work fills this void.
Productivity-inclined
We like to work. We enjoy creating, producing, and making things from other things. There is a chicken and egg logic to this: do we like to work because of the influence of things like capitalism, or did capitalism arise because of this inherent trait of ours?
Maybe the ‘divine spark’ that exists within each of us compels us to wage relentless war on our old friend, entropy:3I should say I dislike the religious connotations to the phrase “divine spark”, but do like the phrase because it sidesteps difficult question of consciousness and emergence—that is, we cannot explain how our constituent bits results in the fact that I am here, typing for you, and you are there, reading and (I hope) thinking about these ideas—explored in this recent Kurzgesagt video. Each time we create or do something, we sling an arrow against the relentless enemy that is the relentless slide towards disorder.4Physics-phiends, don’t come at me—I know entropy is not disorder in the same way I know a tomato is not a vegetable, and yet I’m never going to call a tomato a fruit and I will continue to think about entropy as being related to disorder.
Aside from whatever inherent trend towards work we may have, we are raised and socialised to value and display a robust work ethic, to believe we have a duty to treat work seriously; to figuratively, and sadly even literally sometimes, to give it our all.
Being a Worker Ain’t Great*
* Under current systems permitting worker exploitation
Exploiting our prosocial nature
There is a fundamental truth about how workplaces operate: they seek to exploit our natural need to belong. This urge to belong is particularly sensitive, given the ever rising rates of social isolation and decreased connection.
In both implicit and explicit ways, we are told work is a place where we can belong. In some workplaces, such as places considered prestigious to work at, there is a real sense of ‘aren’t you lucky to work here at a place where some many people wish they would work’ which is a way a sense of belonging is built both more quickly and more strongly.
And so, as part of this use of our need to belong, we are encouraged in a host of ways to build bonds and connections both with the people we work with. Team bonding events have become a reviled part of the modern workplace experience; nothing strikes terror in our hearts more than forced fun, even more so when it’s someone else’s idea of fun. It doesn’t work for children and it is a naïve expectation that it’ll work for adults, especially adults who are forced into employment, just to keep themselves out of poverty.
There is another level to this: we are not only encouraged to form relationships with our colleagues, but to even consider our workplace as a substitute family, or at least an additional family. This exploits our prosocial tendencies in the most blatant way.
We are asked to shoulder burdens; to pull together to support the workplace, to work longer hours, to forgo a pay rise or a promotion because of tough times, because ‘we’re all in this together’. This is, of course, rubbish. And yet, it works, to a degree, and so is used again and again.
One objection I have with the workplace as family model is it one-sided. With our real life families we have reciprocal relationships. We forgive their cranky days because we count on their forbearance on our cranky days.5This is on a theoretical level of course-rarely do real life families have perfect or equal reciprocity. There is no such reciprocity in the workplace; it is all take, with very little (if not outright zero) give. Whereas your real life family will support you during a crisis, your workplace may just consider you a liability and try to manage that risk. Manage that risk is, of course, code for trying to get you and your sorry life off their books.
There is nothing wrong with building relationships with the people we work with. The friendships we form during our daily travails make work less of a distressing hellscape. It is the forced obligation—the expectation that we must become (or at least act friendly) towards those we work with, especially those with more organisational power than us, that is concerning. It is also how our need to belong might be manipulated to mistreat us, by making us work harder, endure worse conditions or outright tolerate abuse or mistreatment.
Our missing big picture
Work provides a purpose for our lives; in fact, it is the go to, socially validated (and indeed, socially expected) point of our lives, at least in the modern world.
After all, there is a reason why one of the first questions we might expect from meeting a stranger is some variation of “so, what do you do for work?”6Of course this question is also another way of asking ‘to what class do you belong?” with the interlocutor certain to respond differently if you say “I’m a barrister specialising in international trade arbitration matters” versus “I stock cans of soup on shelves.”
Workplaces can exploit this by using it as a substitute for proper salaries and proper working conditions. You see, a manager might say, we’re not here selling widgets, we’re saving lives! Therefore, the argument goes, please don’t complain about whatever legitimate concern you have. Even in workplaces that are, in fact, selling widgets, you get variations on this theme, a sense that the capitalism we are engaged with is more worthy that other types of capitalism (and again, you should be grateful you are here with us and not over there with the unwashed them.)
It can, in some workplaces, go even further, where it may be implied, if not outright suggested, you are a selfish person for raising such concerns given the noble purpose of the workplace. This is garbage, of course, even if there may be some legitimate value to the goal of the organisation.
Another way this need for purpose is even more fundamental: we are told we should accept awful and unfilling jobs because everyone needs to work, because work is valuable and important. I have always believed that work for work’s sake has very little inherent value. It does not make us better, happier or healthier humans to be working for work’s sake. It is only work that lets us grow and develop in ways that matter to us that is meaningful. The exploitation and manipulation of the workplace would like us to believe otherwise.
If we do not have a clear view of what our purpose in life might be, it is very easy to allow other’s views to become our views. And so workplaces and society have become great at convincing us that the purpose of our lives is to work and to do anything less, or to work half-heartedly, is a dereliction of purpose and is that abhorrent.
Worker as line item
Using performance metrics in the work place will, in the fullness of time, come to be understood as a form of psychological torture, of something that is incompatible with human rights. This is an intuitive conclusion and a logical one: reducing the complexity and breadth of a human experience and existence to mere quantitative data is, by definition, reductive.
Tracking employee performance makes sense from a capitalist perspective. If most employees can produce x widgets a day, and you are only producing less than that average, you are not performing and should either be performance managed or fired. Data cannot speak to the factors that may be contributing to the quantifiable measures of performance. A usual objection to my views on this is that the data is just used as a starting point, and a manager would seek to understand the employee more holistically. But do they? And if one’s immediate supervisor does, there will be someone up on the organisational chain that sees people only as line items on a spreadsheet. For as much as managers exploit, they too are exploited by those above them, and so on ad infinitum.
As soon as numbers are used to measure, compare, reward and hire employees, aside from ignoring the inherent and necessary richness of human existence, it brings out a sense of competition and incites us into behaviours that are not always healthy. So you work later, just so you get closer to that goal someone has set for you. Or you engage in other behaviour that is contrary to your values. This behaviour, though, makes for outstanding performance at the workplace, at least in the short term, until the stress and harm causes psychological damage.
And so, there is a tension – there is a lever that workplaces can pull to exploit a very common human trait, our susceptibility towards performance metrics and our natural tendency to engage in gamified systems. Pulling this lever, and work places do pull the lever, degrades people and forces them into unhealthy behaviours. And yet pulling this lever supports the central purpose of the workplace; to increase profit (or to raise more fundraising dollars, or save more lives and so on). And so the lever is pulled and workers are exploited.
Why This Exploitation is Bad
Modern work, as the above has shown, consists of the deliberate and intentional exploitation of the traits that make us human, things like our prosocial tendencies, or the impact that reducing our lives to quantitative data points has on our mental image and health.
This is problematic on two levels:
Firstly, on the level of norms and regulative ideals, or to put it another way, in thinking about how life could and should be. This level may seem academic or philosophical, but in fact it is our inclination to dismiss these questions that contributes to the problem, and allows us to be swept along by things which harm us.
Secondly, this exploitation does damage to us day in, day out. It damages our health, our sense of identity, and our development in very clear and very real ways.
Bad in principle
Work plays an important part in our lives. Even in more idealistic versions of reality, work still features in our imaginings. And yet, somewhere along the line, in our desire to value work, we have forgotten something key: that work does not have to be exploitive of our basic human traits. The structure and design of work can be done in ways that are compatible with respecting humans and how we operate. There is nothing natural or essential about the system of work that has developed in the world today that often (if not always) involves some exploitation of basic human psychology.
We have forgotten this. Or, rather, we have been gaslight into thinking work must involve suffering and exploitation.
It’s important to be clear here: work will always be a challenge and involve some measure of pain. Pain and stress (or eustress) are some elements that make work fulfilling and satisfying and lead us to develop as people. The pain of solving a tricky problem, the eustress of dealing with conflicting ideas about the best way forward, or the mental exhaustion after crafting a new idea. I am not arguing for work that looks like idle recreation.
It is only that the challenge of work should come from the things that allow us to grow as humans; and not through the cruel exploitation of how we operate. And yet, they manipulate our thinking to believe that this exploitation is the norm, and instead of voicing our complaints, we should simply remain silent and continue working.
This is an example of a wider problem: our declining ability and willingness to discuss, both as a society and as individuals, the question of how we can live a good life. From our politicians to our parents, we are rarely invited to reflect on how we should structure society, our lives, our work, our economy and so on. Instead, we are encouraged to think teleologically: that we are living in the best possible timeline, that life has been perfected, and we really must just get on board with how things are done.
The current system misleads us daily as to what work should, or even could, look like. Any mistreatment that seeks to disguise itself as normalcy is a very invidious thing and something that should be outright rejected in any part of our lives. Given how much of our lives work consumes, we must insist on better, more respectful treatment.
Bad in practice
The harm caused by the basic and life-sustaining act of going to work is rising each year. This is a sentence that made me upset to write. If it does not make you upset to read, I wonder why that might be the case.
The consequences of the exploitation I have discussed in this essay are many. At a high level, they can be summarised as harm to our physical and mental health. This summary view obscures the awful breadth and width of the damage that being exploited in this way does to us.
Our sense of self, purpose, and value is being eroded by exploitation. The consequence of many of these acts of exploitation in isolation are benign, in the same way limited and non-repeating exposure to (some degree) of radiation is also benign. As always, it is the dose that makes the poison. And so being forced to smile at someone we would rather curb stomp as a once off is likely fine, being forced to smile at this invidious individual every working day for years causes harm to us.
It is the net total of these individual acts of benign (or worse, even seemingly beneficial acts of exploitation) that causes us so much harm. Yet, because the damage occurs in such microscopic ways, it can be quite difficult to establish the epidemiological through line between how we are treated (and forced to act) at work and the grave consequences we face.
Is it any wonder why the mental and physical health of workers declines every passing year?7Here I acknowledge the incredible stress people seeking employment face and how society at large maligns them. The data we have is just the observable tip of a much more frightening iceberg; the consequences of this systematic exploitation may never be truly known.
The damage of all of this is much worse than just the harm it causes individuals, families, and communities—the real kick in the pants is that we lose out on the ideas, creations, and outcomes that would flow from workers that are better and fairly treated. From our own careers, we know we don’t produce our best work under conditions of exploitation. We are just like children and animals and plants: we thrive with love, compassion, kindness, understanding (and indeed, sunlight.) Being ‘stacked ranked’ or being convinced that a board paper is in fact more urgent than dinner with your family are not the conditions that lead to sustainable success.
Maybe it’s Totally Fine
So, what’re the potential counter-arguments?
Firstly, am I wrong to label this behaviour as exploitive? As a trite response, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is indeed a duck, well, it’s not a zebra, is it? I find it hard to think of any other word to describe a series of behaviours that are used in order to produce certain results.
But taking a step back, is it exploitation? As I’ve shown, the conclusion to this is yes. Say I have a friend who whenever I show them a red ball, they fall to the ground in paroxysms of joy. They love red balls oh so much. Would it be wrong of me to show them a red ball to get out of an uncomfortable conversation, or to distract them so I could have the last piece of cake? Is it wrong of a casino to use tactics to promote addictive behaviour within individuals?
The question is: is it wrong to use knowledge you have against someone, where using that knowledge will harm that person, and if your motivation is self-interest? It is a question from any introductory ethics class. We know, and have known for quite a long time, certain biases inherent to being human. To leverage those biases in a way that does not serve the interests of the individual is exploitative.
Secondly, is it (that) damaging? True, there are other causative factors at play in rising levels of poor worker mental health and increasing levels of disengagement. It is implausible that exploitation does not cause harm, especially where that exploitation is aimed at an end that does not benefit the worker, and instead benefits the employer.
Then it becomes a question of making relative assessments: is being exploited in this way worse than, say, being a victim of an industrial accident and losing an arm as a result? No. But neither outcomes sound enticing, do they? We can argue about the extent of the damage this exploitation does, but it is nonsensical to argue exploitation causes no damage at all.
Thirdly, is it just a necessary evil, something that we must tolerate? As a general ethical principle, we should seek to avoid harm. And where we cannot avoid harm, the ethical duty becomes to minimise that harm.
The underlying logic of this counterargument exposes the central calculation to our modern economic approach, where we will apply a cost benefit mentality to, well, everything. This argument can be rephrased as ‘is the damage to workers worth the resultant boost to productivity?’ The answer to this is no, and here is why: despite what decades under strongly neoliberal systems have told us, the economy is meant to serve people; people are not meant to be sacrificed to serve the economy. This is a fundamental and important point: people are not meant to be subservient to market, the market is meant to be an instrument to achieve human goals (of development, growth, fulfilment, and so on.) This has, and perhaps was always going to, become inverted, and we live in an age where this inversion is functional complete. And so we ought to reject outright any suggestion that doing damage to workers is justified if it produces an economic benefit.
Putting this aside for a moment, is exploiting workers’ fundamental biases even an effective strategy for increasing productivity? What the trends show us is that it is, at best, only an effective short-term strategy for increasing performance and productivity. Its performance declines over time and soon crosses a line where it represents a net loss on productivity and related outcomes. Put it this way, I’m going to run quickly from a burning building the first time, but I’ll just turn into that meme dog on the nine hundredth time of the same fire.
To sum up, I can see no effective argument that suggests we should continue to exploit workers in the way workplaces do now. And even if I were wrong, developing new approaches to how employers and employees interact could only be a positive development in the history of labour relations and rights.
Can we escape?
I would like to write a stirring conclusion about how we, as individual workers, can address this through individual action. In reality, as with so many things, you aren’t the answer. The problem is structural and entrenched in how the modern workplace and its managers operate.
The first-mover disadvantage disincentivizes employers from making changes, even if those changes would make happier, more productive workers, but also end the moral damage that people in management currently face through being forced to perpetuate these exploitative systems and approaches.
Despite this, there are two ways forward: structural change and through individual awareness. I am not confident we can tackle worker exploitation—in the narrow sense I have spoken about in this essay, or in the broader sense—under our current neoliberal capitalist framework, ultimately.
Regulation—don’t hold your breath though
Workers have limited power as compared to their employers. It is an asymmetrical power relationship. And similarly, although this statement is increasingly aspirational, employers have limited power as compared with the power of states. So while a worker will struggle to avoid exploitation, a state has more ability to proscribe conduct it deems as contrary to the values the state wishes to embody: states ban murder because allowing murder is not a value (or practice) states wish to allow.
And so regulative norms could seek to eliminate, or at least better shape, the harmful ways in which employers treat their workers. This has historical precedent: we’ve come a long way from the Dickensian workhouse where anything went, short out of outright murder (although, even then, sometimes so!)
It is important to acknowledge that the improvement to workers rights has occurred in the Global North – workers in the Global South continue to be subject to harsh working conditions, such as the child-labour and unbelievable hardships endured by those mining cobalt in the Congo. Lifting the minimum standard is a more urgent issue than addressing the exploitation I have discussed, yet it remains a priority we must turn to.
The power of business lobbies, aided by the inherent neoliberal character of western government, means the chances of effective regulation (or, I suspect, improving workers’ rights on a global level) are slim. The system depends on structural inequality to get things done and to make ludicrous profits. It is for this reason that I am increasingly of the opinion that our current capitalist approach is fundamentally incompatible with meaningful action on climate change.
Individual awareness
It is unjust to put the solution on the back of us as individuals. And yet it is far too abstract to imagine a solution to any problem that does not involve individual action. And so what can—should—individuals do?
The first step is awareness. We must see this exploitation for what it is: deliberate and intentional manipulation with a goal to increase profits (or at least do more of whatever the organisation’s goal is). Once you pay attention to the ways the power asymmetry is used against workers, it becomes harder and harder to ignore. And once one has identified the behaviour as such, it becomes almost comically unsubtle and obvious. You may well wonder why you never noticed it in the first case.
Of course, you’ll still be subject to the exploitation, and expected to operate within its scope, but awareness leads to agency. There is a small but meaningful difference between being manipulated and seeing the game for what it is, and choosing to take part, even if the choice does not feel freely made.
Where awareness becomes powerful, is it frees you from the mechanism that is used to keep the system running: guilt. It’s hard to feel guilty when you realise you have nothing to be guilty about. It is quite liberating.
Once you are free from guilt, you can even test pushing back, albeit carefully—and this is where regulation becomes an essential piece. In the current system, there are limited to no protections against workers refusing to be party to manipulation and gaslighting. And so, I’m not recommending as a general rule you call out the behaviour for what it is, but there is often a middle ground where you can show to those trying to exploit you that you see their attempt and you won’t have it.
Where individual power becomes meaningful is on a collective basis: talk about this issue with your colleagues, your friends, and your family. Better still, join your union (if there is one – or start your own if there is not) and make this issue a part of your union’s priorities.
Work can be difficult enough without being manipulated in a host of ways. By seeing a lot of modern management techniques as exploitative of our core human characteristics, we can finally transcend the master/servant relationship that still lingers in modern labour force dynamics.
Notes
- 1And these enhanced insights are used in all other parts of the great capitalist machine. But that is for another essay.
- 2See, eg, the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index: Factor 4.8 (“Fundamental Labor Rights Are Effectively Guaranteed”).
- 3I should say I dislike the religious connotations to the phrase “divine spark”, but do like the phrase because it sidesteps difficult question of consciousness and emergence—that is, we cannot explain how our constituent bits results in the fact that I am here, typing for you, and you are there, reading and (I hope) thinking about these ideas—explored in this recent Kurzgesagt video.
- 4Physics-phiends, don’t come at me—I know entropy is not disorder in the same way I know a tomato is not a vegetable, and yet I’m never going to call a tomato a fruit and I will continue to think about entropy as being related to disorder.
- 5This is on a theoretical level of course-rarely do real life families have perfect or equal reciprocity.
- 6Of course this question is also another way of asking ‘to what class do you belong?” with the interlocutor certain to respond differently if you say “I’m a barrister specialising in international trade arbitration matters” versus “I stock cans of soup on shelves.”
- 7Here I acknowledge the incredible stress people seeking employment face and how society at large maligns them.